Of Knights and Dragons
by atheshar
Summary: Chapter 26, 27, 28: This time, the games, real and imagined, past and present, are brought to an end. After all, on the final move, there is only one word left to be said. Checkmate. The Phantom walks a road you have never seen him take before.
1. Paris, 1874

This story takes place three years (and change) after the "famous disaster". It's based mostly on the ALW musical and film, at least visually. Erik's past, though, will always be Leroux (because, to put it simply, it's better that way), and I've been told that here is a distinctly Leroux feeling to the Phantom at times.

A warning of sorts: apparently my stories have a habit of… not ending, well, exactly happily. Who knows…? Not even I, yet. But I can promise it WILL be finished, in time.

EC / RC. Absolutely no Raoul bashing at all, so if you're looking for it, look elsewhere.

Disclaimer: you ought to know by now that I'm stealing all of this from better minds. Or, as my cousin said, "Is ALW still alive?" "Yes." "Oh, that's good. Usually geniuses like that are dead…"

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**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter I: Paris, 1874_

"…_passionate souls will seek pain."_

_(Brendan Francis)_

The thing Christophé loved best about justice, he decided, was its absoluteness.

The police captain leaned back in his straight-backed wooden chair, fiddling with the pen in his hand, rolling it beneath his fingers, over and over, a slow rhythmic repetition. From his position he could look out the one regular square window set in the wall, directly out onto the Rue Scribe. This afternoon it was crowded with walking citizens and carriage-bound gentry, all heading who-knew-where. This station, Station Twenty-Four, was one of two in this—the Opera district of Paris.

The sound of the street filled Christophé's room, hardly muffled by the three-story journey up from the street below. It never ceased to amaze him how simply sound could travel paths made much more difficult for man himself; from street to third story or from mouth to soul. The officer's attention wasn't on the street, however, or the polished mahogany furniture that adorned this—the most successful station in all Paris—nor was it on the dimmed-down gas lamps perched on the walls. He rolled his pen over and over in his fingers, staring at the as-yet unsigned paper gracing the polished wooden desk.

A death warrant.

Christophé wasn't exactly sure, that bright July morning, who he hesitated. It wasn't the first he had obtained and issued in the past three-and-a-half years since the forcible retirement of his predecessor on the heels of that almighty disaster in the Opera Populaire (under the jurisdiction of Station 24). He had lost count of the number of 'kills' he had sanctioned in his time. A dozen? More?

No matter. He twirled the pen upright and set his name—_Captain Christophé R. Doione_—on the line, flicked the pen down, and carefully folded the letter in thirds. He drew a scrap of paper from his pocket, jotted down the accused's name, put _11:00, Rue Scribe x Rue Opera_, and slipped the note into his pocket.

Christophé lifted his hat to his head, adjusted the lay of his jacket, and carefully made sure that his badge was securely fastened to his lapel. He rolled the pen aside, picked up the carefully folded page, and ducked into the adjoining office.

"One for the records, Cecile," he said to his secretary, purposefully ignoring her slightly upraised eyebrow as she made out the signed line and the fine, raised seal. She had become accustomed to the Latin phrase _terminus est_ that graced it… if 'graced' was the right word. To her credit, though, she said nothing, merely filing the page away and marking it down in the records. She, too, had become used to the sight.

"Good day, monsieur," she said simply.

"And you, mam'selle," Christophé replied, tipping his hat as he started for the door. As it was he nearly collided with a junior officer on his way in. "Pardôn," the junior said, stepping back. "Cap'n, a note, addressed to you, arrived on the front desk."

Christophé snatched the fine paper from the other's hands and saw that it was, indeed, addressed to him by name alone. The scratchy handwriting of the black-inked words forestalled him from asking who had brought it. He knew already what the answer would bring; a look of confusion and a shrug. "My thanks," he muttered, brushing past the junior and down the stairs from his third storey office, the note clenched unread in his hands.

His first contact with Uriel had been the very day he had been installed as Captain of Station 24, hardly a week after the Opera fire. The subsequent disaster had ended with his predecessor ousted from Captaincy. The fine parchment of the first note had been resting on his desk one morning, pretty as you please, with no explanations attached. He had queried the staff—discreetly of course—but found no one untrustworthy, and to this day no idea how the letter had arrived on his desk in the first place… in the middle of a high-security police station.

It was then that Christophé began to respect the mysterious author and regard his claims seriously. The note was surprisingly plainly worded, and viciously chilling for all that. The man (or so he assumed it was a man, though there was no indication of it) offered his direct services to the Parisian police. The judicial network was… limited… in what it could do in certain situations, a fact of which it seemed Uriel was very well aware; he offered himself as a silent 'hand of justice' in such situations.

_Assassin_ was, of course, a carefully avoided word; the existence of such a person was, in the least, illegal, never mind the havoc it wrecked in the moral realms of society. But part of the bargain, conveniently, was that the French government quietly pretend that the man did not exist… a concession that the government proved quite willing to grant, considering the circumstances.

So Station 24 had its hired killer, and the man kept his desired anonymity… and a hefty 30,000 Francs a month, a fine sum by any standard. Both sides, therefore, seemed content enough with the arrangement, at least for the moment. Christophé, understandably, could never shake the uneasiness that he was dealing with a possibly irate and certainly skilled killer whom he knew practically nothing about.

Yet the man had his uses. Among the station officers and the people of Paris he had become known as _Uriel_; not his real name, of course, not a man's name at all. But according to Biblical tradition Uriel was the fourth of the seven Archangels—the Messenger of Death sent to slay the firstborn sons of Egypt. Christophé thought the name rather… fitting, in a twisted way.

Their contacts, by Uriel's demand, had been brief (a fact for which Christophé was fervently thankful) and purely business when they did occur. They rarely actually met; the police chief arranged to have the name of the target dropped at some shop or post or other, and somehow it found its way into Uriel's hands. Once he had actually had the audacity to have the note tracked; it changed hands to less than three times before an icily worded warning found its way, somehow, into the chief's jacket pocket (without his knowing, no less!), at which point he had hurriedly desisted from the watch. He privately convinced himself that he didn't really _want_ to know who Uriel was.

Now this. He unfolded the parchment, scanning it quickly. The wording was, not surprisingly, brief: _An hour before midnight, at the junction of Scribe and Opera. Come alone._ The Captain slipped the note into an inner pocket where it settled beside the one he had penned only a moment ago. The pair burned a hole in his pocket. "Seems I won't need to have it delivered," Christophé muttered through his teeth, striding out the front door and into the busy street.


	2. Uriel

Disclaimer: you ought to know by now that I'm stealing all of this from better minds. Or, as my cousin said, "Isn't there a copyright on all of this? So you aren't supposed to use the characters?" "Probably. Oh well."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter II: Uriel_

"_To wish to act like angels while we are still in the world is nothing but folly."_

_(Saint Teresa of Avila)_

_And it has to rain,_ Christophé thought bitterly, wrapping his blue cloak about him, wishing—not for the first time—that the police standard issue included hoods along with the thick wool cape. The tall, flat-topped hats were practically useless in keeping off the rain, he had discovered to his dismay, though particularly good when one needed to make one's way through the crowd.

At this hour, especially considering the weather, the streets were empty. He hunched his shoulders against the wind-driven torrent—it was the kind that hammered insistently, slowly trickling through all layers of protection, until he was soaked to the skin. His wet hair clung to his forehead, the fringes falling into his eyes.

The occasional lamp standing sentinel along the streets was only a yellow-blurred haze in the gloom, gleaming oddly through the steady drizzle here and there, a host of phantom lights. The lantern swinging from his hand was almost no use at all, illuminating a little circle of ground around his squelching boots and casting a single hopeful ray of light quickly devoured by the rain. He was acutely aware, though, that the glass-shrouded light blinked through the storm, marking him out perfectly, a condemning beacon. He could barely hear his own footsteps over the rain.

So when the rainy night told him "you are late, monsieur," he started, though he was expecting the address.

"My apologies, Uriel," Christophé said, without stopping. There were still two blacks to the appointed intersection, but the Captain had expected to be accosted en route. It was a part of Uriel's ways, he had been quick to discover.

"No need for that. Please, continue on," said the night, but despite it Christophé had the distinct impression that his encounterer was walking just behind him to the left. The Captain gave no sign, calmly folding his hands behind his back as he walked, acutely aware of the shadowy presence just beyond sight over his shoulder. "Who dies tomorrow night?" Uriel said without further introduction, as if the matter were really of no import.

The cold tone chilled Christophé more than the trickles of rainwater running down his face and neck. "Monsieur d'Halier," the Captain provided. "For criminal activity and illegal trafficking with Germany."

Uriel laughed softly. "Since when have I needed the justification, Captain? Consider it done."

"Wait." Christophé turned, or started to, halted by a hiss of warning. There came sounds from the night, calls, voices, people approaching, running footsteps. A gloved hand seized the front of his cloak and roughly spun him about to face the beckoning shadow of an alley.

"It would be as unfortunate for you to be found tonight as I, Captain," the man said, behind him again, propelling him forward insistently. The officer went along quietly, reluctantly recognizing the truth of the statement. The sound of voices drew closer, and a line of lanterns or torches came in sight through the persistent storm. The Captain swept his cloak over the lantern to hide the tiny light. Uriel appeared, a shadow against the mouth of the alley, flat against the wall, looking out on the street. The torches passed by, but no one looked in their direction; hazy faces glistened wetly in the storm. They were too indistinct for Christophé to recognize. He saw a flicker of motion—Uriel closed his eyes? It made no sense.

But the diversion afforded the man his first glimpse of his 'free agent'. Tall, probably a few inches over six feet, and very lean beneath the black cape and evening suit, he noticed as Uriel turned. "Monsieur," he called out, taking a step forward.

"Quietly, Captain. They are still close," Uriel warned, completing the turn, his features a mass of shadow the officer couldn't penetrate. Then suddenly faint points of light gleamed. Christophé staggered back when he realized that Uriel had opened his eyes, and it was those that gleamed strange and bright like molten gold… like a cat's. Reflexively he brought up his lantern as if to ward off a ghost; the narrow beam of light fell on Uriel's face and revealed it in full, masked in black leather that ran with rainwater. In the light, the eyes were blue… clear and ordinary, penetrating blue.

Then Uriel spun away into the night, the storm covering any sound of his departure he might have made, leaving a startled Christophé with a lifted lantern staring blankly out after him. At length the Captain shook himself all over, dropped his arm to his side, and muttered something about the night playing tricks on the eyes. He began the rain-soaked walk back to Station 24, the water falling about him like Heaven's tears, unable to shake the image of the golden cats'-eyes in his mind.

"Blast this rain," he muttered, pulling his cloak close. "Blast all this city."


	3. Key Lamps

waves to Martian Aries I'll try my best not to disappoint!

Disclaimer: you should all know by now, I'm stealing this from better minds. Or, as my cousin said, "Thou shalt not steal. Except when it's something cool. Then it's ok."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter III: Key Lamps_

"_Today, I had a dozen hands, I could write a dozen tales, strange wonderful tales, all at one time…"_

_(Sherwood Anderson)_

When Erik returned to the hulking shelter of the burnt-out husk of the Opera Populaire, he shed his long cloak immediately. The fine fabric had soaked through completely in that infernal rain, despite the thin layer of oilcloth that usually did an admirable job of shedding the water. He folded the wet fabric over his arm, careful to keep it off the dusty ground.

The lantern was waiting where he had left it days ago, just inside the concealed entrance, its simple form dark but begging to be lit. He had not deigned to use it for some time—these underground corridors were as familiar to him as the melodic lines of his own compositions. Yet, this night, for some reason he reached for the little glow that the lantern would provide, and let it guide his eyes within the charred ruins.

Whatever the papers might say, the old Opera House was not changed greatly in the "famous disaster" the night of Don Juan three and a half years ago. The flames had spread quickly, decimating the stage proper, the fabric seats, and engulfing much of the wooden backstage, making it a veritable deathtrap. But the seven-storey Opera House was built in stone—albeit now charred stone, much of it dusty and some of it crumbling—but solid stone nonetheless. Besides, his lair was built on the lake, and no fire had touched it except the fire that lived within it.

The mob had been another matter, yet on his return Erik had acerbically noted that their destruction had been largely in passing, a random act, not the indiscriminate fury achieved by the mindless fire. Mankind, the Phantom thought, didn't have the heartlessness necessary to understand and initiate true destruction.

In the end, they had overturned a few candles, scattered and burned many of the papers, and destroyed much of his finer artwork. It was that last that had landed most heavily on him at his first return, when mind and soul were still shattered and only hesitantly reconstructed, held together by a feeble will after Christine had left him. He had fallen to his knees in anguish amidst their remnants—the ashes of paintings he had labored over, sketches that had occupied long hours of his days, perfect memories of Christine he had painstakingly rendered on the page, hesitantly committed to paper. The mob had torn them as mercilessly as Christine had utterly destroyed him that night.

Looking back, he was privately ashamed at his obvious weakness—shame that festered into anger. Now, removed from the event and coldly rational, he acknowledged that in fact the worst loss of the night had been the musical scores destroyed. And yet, he could always write, given a blank page and a space of silence.

Or so he told himself; but it did not explain why his organ had remained deathly silent, or the existence of the one surviving fragment of a page he had found, holding Christine's face, which even now had taken up residence in the inside pocket of his vest.

Erik draped the soaked cloak over the back of a wrought-iron chair to dry, pulled off his gloves, and ran a hand through his hair, somewhat irritated at the dampness of everything. He shed coat and vest as well, setting them to dry, and lit several candles. He called them 'key lamps'; as if by magic (but as he knew very well, having designed them, truly due to clever engineering), the other candles lit one by one of their own accord, until the entire space was a shimmering curtain of suspended lights, adding their tiny visual voices to a symphony dominated by darkness.

The place was as he had left it, of course, he thought as he doused the little lantern and set it aside. Dark and complete, dominated by the sure and silent presence of the organ glittering blackly in the center of its raised dais.

"Monsieur d'Halier," he said aloud, at last removing the black mask and replacing it with the white half-mask that his years at the Opera had made infamous. In his new life, the trappings of the old were unadvised. All of Paris knew of the Opera Ghost and his mask—he would be recognized on an instant; the Phantom was very much a hunted man. Yet the years had accustomed him to certain things, and he saw no reason to change them.

He had been careful to prevent a repetition of the past with his position as "Uriel". He had done nothing to suggest the name, but nothing to dispel it either. Being called the "Angel of Death" was… in a way… _gratifying._ He barely kept a bitter laugh in check.

Comfortably alone, now, he leaned back into the stone-carved chair—what Raoul, if he had known, disparagingly referred to as a _throne_—and rested his chin on the chair arm by way of palm, forearm, and elbow. "Monsieur d'Halier," he said again. He knew the name and the accompanying man, unusually enough. A former Opera patron, a regular actually, one of the lucky ones to escape the night of _Don Juan_. His had been a wildly successful business, Erik remembered, calling to mind the incessant chatter of the ballet rats, which had unintentionally kept him on the edge of Parisian gossip… when he cared to listen.

Halier had apparently attempted one risk too many, and won the interest of the French police in the process. Tomorrow would be his last day alive. Today, Erik corrected, when the small wall-mounted clock somewhere deeper within softly chimed the midnight hour.

His quiet rumination was interrupted by a rather louder, rather more insistent bell—the high-pitched, never-ending chime of the bell that warned of visitors across the lake. Erik's head snapped up from his hand at the sound, his whole body stiffening, eyes shifting to look out through the rough-hewn stone arch guarded by twin figures of Atlas, but he could not see far across the subterranean waters. No one had come to the shores of the lake in the time since his return.

No one had bothered—or perhaps more accurately, _dared_—to return, and discover if he still existed. Erik rose to his feet, eyes on the vibrating, tinkling bell.


	4. Life after Love

The idea for 'key lamps' came from an attempt to understand how on earth Erik would be able to keep all the candles alight when he needed them; thanks to my brother for the idea! Speaking of which, today he graduates from college at UHart, so a tip to the school mascot in this chapter.

I apologize for that antagonizing cliffhanger last chapter; it will all become clear soon, I promise.

I have discovered something. I can't write girls (despite the fact I am one) to save my life. This, apparently, includes Christine, to my woe.

Disclaimer: you ought to know by now I'm stealing this from better minds. Or, as my cousin says, "It's not stealing if you don't get caught!" "Oops."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter IV: Life after Love_

"…_for we have in the dream forsaken our allegiance to the organizing, controlling and rectifying forces of the world, the Universal Conscience. We have sworn fealty to the wild, incalculable, creative forces, the Imagination of the Universe."_

_(Isak Dinesen)_

Like a heavenly spear thrown by Apollo, the light of the sun lanced through the minute gap between curtains, dappling the oak-paneled floor and the heavy quilts of the bed, coming to rest at last against the head of the pillow, a gleaming bar of light. Christine lay with her cheek cradled on one arm, a warm pillow, curled up innocently on the still-dark half of the bed, eyes blissfully closed. If she dreamed she gave no outward sign; her chest rose and fell peacefully with each deep breath she took. Not once did her long eyelashes flutter.

In the armchair by the window Raoul sat watching her, her small smile mirrored on his own face. She was so innocent, so sweet, so kindly, a perfect girl. At times like this he felt ashamedly guilty that she loved him so completely—how unworthy it made him feel of her, of her love! But he loved her. God! How he loved her!

She stirred slightly in her sleep, murmuring a quiet word, a name. Raoul did not attempt to catch it, knowing what the word would be. It was not his name, he knew, and that had saddened him once—but that was a fantasy that never could be. Her dream-world belonged to her past.

Back in the beginning, she had been both afraid and shamed when she had woken those early nights after they had fled to England, woken in Raoul's arms, frantically calling the name of the man she had left broken behind her. She had seen the faint hurt in his brown eyes; but he had only held her close through her tears, sheltering her, murmuring soft assurances and comforting words, until her weeping and trembling subsided in his arms. She had turned to him, then, her tears of misery still streaking her face, and managed a smile. He had held her close…

He could not fault her for her past, for the dreams that came beyond her control, for the wild nature, the passion the Maestro had woken in her. It was an event she could not control. She had not asked for this strange communion… neither of them had. If she could, Raoul knew, she would gladly abandon her past, and live with him alone… but she could not. So Raoul loved her nonetheless, body and soul, enough for the both of them.

He couldn't grudge her for her dreams, would never be able to forgive himself if he did. Part of her would always belong to the ghost; a piece and portion of her soul was left to him forever. Raoul counted himself lucky that it had never quite extinguished the blossom of love that had grown, unlikely though it seemed, between the Vicomte and the chorus girl; a wild rose, untamed, ranging far from the bush, but no less beautiful. She was his, and he hers.

So when she stirred in her sleep and murmured _Erik,_ Raoul only smiled, went to the window, and drew the curtains back, letting the early-morning sunlight stream into the room, blanketing it in a golden haze.

Christine stirred and woke from her shroud of dreams, eyes blank for a moment, then fixing on the figure framed in the window. Her blue eyes lit up with contentment as she slowly came awake and sat up, her back against the carved headboard. "Morning, angel," Raoul said with a wide smile to see her awake, her long brown locks falling around her face.

"Morning, Raoul," she replied, hiding a yawn, throwing back the coverlet and rising to her feet to cross to his side. He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned against him, tilting her head to rest on his chest. Beneath his tunic she could hear his heart beating, strong and steady.

"Sweet dreams?" Raoul queried gently.

But she didn't stiffen in his arms, as she had used to do. "Not half so sweet as waking," she said, and laughed when his grip tightened in loving joy. "I did not sleep too late, did I?" she said, tilting her head to peer out the window at the country estate.

"No," he mumbled into her curling hair, eyes out the window at the Chagny residence. "Not at all, dearest Christine."

Dearest Christine.

They took breakfast out on the lawn, ignoring the curious looks of the maids and servants, and spent the morning in the bright, warm July sun, enjoying a rare blue-skied day free of rain. They sat together on the rough boulders in the garden, the smell of lilacs and forsythia and azalea rising about them in a heady brew. They remembered England, and the four months they had spent there directly following the infamous Opera events, staying in London and the nearby Oxford university with Lord Derek, an old friend of the Chagny family. She told him stories of the Opera, and they both laughed, even though he had heard them before. But most of their time was spent sitting silently side-by-side, hands locked, looking out across the brilliant green countryside, counting the bobbing heads of daisies, watching the sparrowhawks wheeling in the sky, leaning against each other happily. The wind sang an idle melody about them. It was times like these when Raoul had come to understand not to begrudge her dreams. The night was hers, hers and _his_, but the days belonged to the young Vicomte and Vicomtess alone.

"I dreamed of Him again last night," Christine admitted in a quiet voice. "Of… of the ghost."

"I know," Raoul murmured, patting their clasped hands. "You called out to him just before you woke."

Fear and shame washed over Christine's features. "Oh, Raoul!" she gasped. "I',m so sorry, I don't mean to… oh, how could I…" and she hung her head.

He hushed her with a gentle finger to her lips. "Shhh, Christine, it's all right," he told her. "It's all right," he repeated. "I will always love you, no matter what. But I know He will, too. I know how much you love me—but I understand that there will always be a part of you that loves Him as well. He gave too much to you—too much to _both_ of us—for that not to be true. I can't begrudge him that part of your heart, Christine. Look how blessed we are, together… why, little Gerard is two…"

"Two and a half," she corrected with a little smile, as Gerard would have had he been there.

"…two and a half," Raoul amended with a laugh. "Don't linger over the dreams, Christine, because no matter what we will be together… right?"

She answered him with a kiss, every bit as full and as passionate as the one they shared on the roof of the Opera Populaire. As they held each other, if at that moment either of them remembered the kiss she had shared with the ghost, they did not make mention, and it did not dilute the moment. At length Raoul gently pulled back from her. "Christine, I love you," he murmured, perfectly completing the moment. Her smile was more brilliant than the sun.

When, near midmorning, the two of them wandered back to the manor hand-in-hand, they found the yard playing host to a stately carriage and a team of proud white horses. "The brothers d'Halier are here," Christine said delightedly when she made out the stately crest of the Halier family boldly lacquerated on the doors to the coach. "I hope we haven't kept them waiting for long!"

"We haven't," Raoul assured her, seeing that the team was still hitched to the coach. He smiled and extended an arm to her, and bowed with mock formality, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Would you care to accompany me, Vicomtess de Chagny, to greet our guests?" he said, somehow keeping his tone suitably grave.

She dipped into a little curtsy, failing miserably at hiding her answering smile. "Why, my dear Vicomte, you are far too gracious," she said, accepting his arm. So, arm in arm, the two of them walked up to the door to their estate, the shadows from the midmorning sun rising long behind them.

As they walked in and closed the oak doors behind them, the circling hawk plummeted downward from midair in a fifty-foot dive and snatched a raven on the wing right above the threshold to their home. The driver of the coach, watching the aerial spectacle, muttered something about superstitions and turned away.


	5. Cold Comfort

I have always loved Raoul—not in the way I do the Phantom, but in his own sense. I just became tired with seeing him torn apart ruthlessly in one story after another. Why not a sympathetic, kind, caring, intelligent Raoul? Christine would not settle for anything less, I don't think. And, if Raoul is to truly be all these things, he would have to accept that Christine will never entirely be his. Of course, there's a difference between a dream-Erik and a real one. For one, the first does nothing, while the second…

Thanks for pointing out the correct spelling (as you can probably tell, I do most of my writing between-classes! Hopefully I won't to anything dumb like add on _e_'s in the future; I did go back and fix that).

If everything keeps going well, I should be able to continue to update daily. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I, own this? As my cousin said, "Possession kills desire." Ok, so that was Dr. Stekhel, but the idea is the same.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter V: Cold Comfort_

"_In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate."_

_(Erick Fromm)_

"Pierre! Raphael!"

"Welcome home, Raoul," Pierre, the older of the two d'Haliers, said, turning when the young Chagny couple walked into the parlor. His younger brother Raphael stood hesitantly off to one side, a glass of icewater in his hand.

"Thanks for the welcome, it was unexpected," Raoul said with a genuine smile, which Pierre depreciated with a wave before they clasped hands heartily. The two of them were nearly of an age, old counterparts in much of the Paris business, fellows who had often gone side-by-side to the Opera Populaire in its glory days. "And—by France, Raphael, you've changed!" the Vicomte remarked in genuine amazement, stepping back to look the younger Halier brother closely from head to foot. The last he had seen of Raphael had been three years previous, before he and Christine had retreated to Oxford. Raphael had both grown and filled out, turning into a sturdy, dashing young man, with brown curls and curious gray eyes. He looked much like Pierre had at eighteen, Raoul realized, and by the proud gleam in Pierre's eyes the man knew it.

"Come, both of you, sit," Christine offered into the brief silence, gesturing to the array of comfortably padded chairs. "It must have been several hours' drive from Paris. Would you care for anything? Tea, or…?"

"Tea would be wonderful, dear," Raoul said, and Christine flashed him a beautiful smile—the kind he had so desperately fallen in love with—as she left. "Let's take my lovely wife's advice," Raoul said, and the three of them settled themselves amiably.

"Was it an English wedding, then?" Pierre asked curiously, noticing the golden band on Raoul's finger.

"Yes—what Christine wanted. Sublimely perfect," Raoul said, leaning back comfortably. "England… truly is a charming place. It could never replace our dear France, of course, but there is a sweet tranquility to it—and any place with Christine is paradise."

"My dear Vicomte, I truly believe you are actually in love," Pierre marveled.

"It is a magnificent sensation, Pierre, you should try it someday," Raoul replied flippantly, making Raphael muffle his snort in his icewater, and setting them all to laughing.

Christine returned a moment later with a tray, a steaming pot of water, and several cups. Raoul hurriedly rose to take it from her and set it on the table, his hand lingering on hers. There was a sprig of thyme and amaranth entwined set on the tray, adding a sweet scent to the air. Christine looked away, mouth curving faintly, at his expression.

"Tell me of Paris," Raoul said as he poured. "How fairs the City of Lights?"

"Well and not well," Pierre said cryptically, accepting a mug of the steaming tea and sipping it cautiously. He raised his eyebrows and looked down, surprised. "An English brew?" he asked.

"Quite." Raoul sat, his own cup to hand. "Christine and I grew quite fond of it." He held out a cup to her as well. "What is this of 'not well' you say?" he queried.

Pierre sighed and swirled the tea idly in his cup. "Now you ask much," he commented. "You recall that fiasco at the Opera—of course," the elder d'Halier went on, remembering the past history of this particular couple. "Well, after you left for England… you stayed in Oxford, with Lord Derek, wasn't it? A second cousin of the family, right?... well, Paris was quiet. As quiet as a place like this can be." Raphael laughed at his brother's words, and the Chagnys smiled.

"That's changed." Pierre's voice frosted over slightly; the tea sat unnoticed in his hand. "It began… how long ago, Raphael?"

"Three years and some."

"Yes. Men started dying. And not only men." Raoul's head jerked up. The tea, still hot, sloshed out of the cup, spilling on his hand; he hissed in pain and hurriedly set it aside. "I know," Pierre went on. "Men of business and substance and status… the Comte de Chateau, Monsieur Aderre, Madame Diré…" Raoul whistled softly, and Pierre paused. "Precisely," the older brother went on. "All high-ranking, all well-known and well-respected. All _dead_."

"Do they know who?" Christine asked. "Surely, the police—"

"—know no more than the rest of us, apparently," Pierre said, leaning forward, tea forgotten. "Not that they admit, anyways. I'm beginning to expect they're entirely useless, at least with anything important. First the Opera, now Uriel…"

"Uriel?" Raoul asked, recognizing the Biblical allusion.

"The 'Angel of Death', yes, and a fitting name it is too. One stroke." He held up a single finger abruptly for emphasis. "One, to the heart or throat. No one has seen him. No one knows what he looks like or where he is from. He just comes, and leaves them dead."

"How often, and how many?" Raoul asked crisply.

The younger of the brothers shrugged. "Every month or so. I've lost count of the number."

"Raoul," Pierre began, carefully setting his tea aside and folding his hands, leaning forward. "This reign of terror has gone on long enough. The police are idle and useless. Raphael and I have been talking. We want to take this into our own hands."

The Vicomte rose to his feet, pacing across the length of the room. He paused at the window to pull back the curtain slightly. "And I suppose you want me in on this… this _nonsense_, do you?" he said.

Pierre rose slowly to his feet. "It isn't nonsense, Raoul," he said suddenly, intensely. "There's no pattern to this random destruction—_murder_—that we have seen. But there _must_ be! Paris is sitting prey to a deranged madman while we sit by, Vicomte!"

"And that in itself tells you something about our precious city," Raoul said with a snort. "I've long ago given up on murder mysteries, Pierre. They have a way of turning deadly. I promised myself it was over when I went to England. Paris and Uriel suit each other, and I'm perfectly content with leaving them to each other."

"And if he comes here?" Raphael suggested quietly, rising to his feet. "If it is you or I he seeks next… or Christine?"

Raoul stiffened against the window. "_Never_ threaten my wife," he said evenly. "I am not joining you," he said flatly. "I am not." He turned, his face expressionless. "Gentlemen, you should leave if you wish to return to Paris by dusk," he said harshly.

"Raoul," Christine remonstrated, but Pierre quieted her with a soothing gesture as he rose to his feet.

"As you wish," d'Halier said without a hint of inflection, and like that walked out.

His brother paused at the door. "If you should reconsider, Vicomte, be sure to call on us," he offered. At Raoul's flat look he shrugged and donned his had, following his brother through the door. A few moments later there came the sound of hooves and the grind of wood on stone as the d'Halier carriage pulled away from the Chagny estate. Raoul watched them go, then let fall the curtain.

"They're going to get themselves killed," he muttered, turning away. He looked at Christine, to find her trembling, staring at nothing. "Christine!" he called, racing to her side, relieving her hand of the rapidly cooling tea before it spilled. "What is it? What is wrong?" he pleaded.

She looked up at him, her wide blue eyes frightened. "I just remembered the dream I had last night, Raoul," she said. "My dream."


	6. In FairyTales

Disclaimer: It hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. Or, as my cousin said, "Own? You? Don't be silly."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter VI: In Fairy-Tales_

"_It is when we try to grapple with another man's infinite need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun."_

_(Joseph Conrad)_

"What is this dream of yours, Christine?" Raoul said with all seriousness, taking her arms in his hands. "When did you have it?"

"Last night," she said, giving the simpler answer first, "though I have only just remembered. I… I always dream of Him, you know," she said, unable to erase the guilt that tinged her voice. When Raoul said nothing she hurried on. "Remember, how I called His name just before I woke? That, too, was part of the dream. There was a wall…"

…_the wall stretched away, until it made infinity seem small, defying the imagination—enrapturing it and seducing it. Christine was an infinitesimally small speck pinned against it, an insect clinging to it, a howling wind pressing her flat against its ice-cold surface, unable to breathe. There was a voice on that wind, one she could almost recognize, cold and despairing._

_The world tilted and the wall became the floor, chillingly cold. Darkness swooped down from the reaches of this world, hiding everything from sight, restricting her universe to a few paces in each direction, she saw as she lifted her head. The floor rocked gently beneath her—she was lying on the floor of a boat._

_Then, without moving, she found herself seated, as it is in the peculiar way of dreams. Candles, walls, and memories drifted past in an arcane phantasmagoria, sliding past her stationary position as the world slowly spun under her. There, the windy day at the cottage by the sea… her father smiling as he played the violin… Meg prancing on the stage… the rose… the lair._

_The last came into focus, and she realized she was drifting across the surface of the lake, as if the boat were guided by ghostly hands. Candles flared in the darkness, circling, not quite illuminating the Phantom's haunt, half-clothing it in darkness. Christine leaned forward, straining to see. The place seemed empty. Where was…_

"_Erik!" she screamed, seeing him at last, or at least she thought it was he, that dark shape sprawled across the ground, unmoving… _Erik, Erik, Erik_, the walls echoed mournfully, sighing the word back to each other, whispers trailing into silence._

_The boat was gone and somehow she was on the shore, in the manner of dreams, racing with all her will towards him. She was running—running more slowly than a fly in amber, trapped, helpless, an insect crystallized into a perfect, glittering, useless diadem._

_But from her new position she could see him perfectly. He was lying on his back on that petrifyingly cold stone floor, hands folded on his chest, divested of his black cloak but as impeccably dressed as ever, as if the outer shell could veil the horror of his figure. The mask reclined, as it always did, on the right half of his face—as she remembered it from a thousand minutes and dreams—but behind it the penetrating blue eyes were closed._

"_Erik," Christine said, tried to say, but the amber held her close—sweet amber, that substance that is the lifeblood of dreams. She desired desperately to go to him. If he knew, if he heard, he did not move, made no sign. There was no heartbeat in his neck, to gentle rise and fall of his chest. The air was cold… so cold._

_Then the hovering, watching shadows laughed at her; eyes gleamed, golden like cats' eyes, like Erik's eyes in darkness; but they stared out at her from a creature of nightmares. It was all in black, as if robed in the gossamer silks and velvets of night, flowing ethereal garments summoned from a netherworld beyond man's vilest thoughts. A vast cloak swept out from those shoulders to the corners of the Earth. In one hand was a sword, gleaming and cold; in the other was a rope. A black mask and scarf hid the entirety of the face except for those hateful, wretched, burning eyes, twin stars of liquidated gold. But the voice—it was His voice, for she would know it no matter what guise it came in, quoting in terrible phrase that line which Epicurus had made immortal: "Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." The darkness laughed at her fear. The specter with the terrible voice towered over the fallen Erik, filling so completely the space the Phantom had previously dominated, as if it had slain him merely by removing all the air, suffocating his genius to an ember and the ember to ashes._

_Great wings spread out from those powerful shoulders—wings pinioned and feathered so black they shone. The Angel of Death stood over its child, unmoving, and laughed, a hollow sound that echoed up from uncounted depths, telling a slow and solemn tale of emptiness. There was alienation in that laugh, a sense of eons of being alone, a bitter remonstration, an acceptance, that chilled Christine more than the clinging strands of death that had always lingered in the Phantom's lair. In that chill, Christine at last found her voice: "ERIK!"_

…and woke, sun shining in her eyes.

Raoul looked down into her open, honest blue eyes, staring up at him with a mixture of fear and pleading. "Christine," Raoul began, searching for a kindly way to sat it. "It was only a dream, Christine, nothing more."

Despite the gentle words, something wild rose in her eyes. "But it _isn't_, Raoul," she insisted. "You know how my dreams of Him are. They are _real_. They _happen_. They're as much… as much true as anything I have known! He makes them so!"

"And if they are," Raoul said, "if…" he took a deep breath, turning his face away, hating himself for what he was about to say. "If it is true, it still wouldn't matter, Christine. We left him and his illusions behind. We fled from the terror and the intrigue and the fantasies…"

Something akin to horror lit in Christine's eyes. "You would just leave him to die, wouldn't' you?" she said in a quavering voice barely above a whisper.

"Christine," she remonstrated, then abandoned his gentle words at the fury in her eyes. "God, Christine, he tried to kill me!" the Vicomte yelled. "Do you understand that? He kills! Buquet, Piangi… have you forgotten them? By France, Christine, what kind of innocence do you claw around you? Do you realize what a _monster_ that man was? I will never understand how we escaped so simply as we did. I could have—he would—God, Christine, I almost lost you! And even if you and I had survived, but without that love, I don't think I… I could have kept on living. Alone." He let go of her arms as if the contact hurt him, turned away, raising one hand to defiantly streak away the tears of anger that threatened to fall.

"Oh, Raoul…" and there was such love in Christine's voice that he wanted to hold her in his arms and forget all of this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't. "Christine, this is not a fairy-tale. There aren't any happily-ever-afters. There are no noble, shining knights to rescue pretty maids from evil dragons. There's no fairy tale love that lives forever. If it's seemed that way between us sometimes… it is because we are lucky, you and I. Ours is an untainted fire. I thought… Christine, when you chose me, I lived and died in that moment. I was happy—God, it seems so awkward to say that word, but it's true. I had thought… I had hoped… you could be… _happy_… with me."

He lifted trembling fingers to her cheek. "_That_ is why I could never grudge you the dreams, you know. There was—is—a part of me that twists in torment every time you call his name in your sleep of innocence. But I can't change it. Maybe… maybe I've been blind. Maybe I was only deluding myself, and you really…" he closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. "…you really, in the end, just love…"

"you," Christine said, shushing him with a finger to his lips. "I love _you_, Raoul, no one else."

He looked down at her through a veil of tears he could neither banish not explain. "Then why?"

She leaned against him, her hand toying with a lock of her hair. "I don't know," she whispered. "But I cannot forget him. Each night, I sleep, and he comes—I don't call, but he comes, and I do not have the strength to send him away. I… I already betrayed him once. I can't do it again. I feel… I feel as if he survives on the mere memory of me, and without me, he will die. I shattered him once, Raoul, and I can't do it again. I can't be the reason he dies… I just _can't_…"

"I understand," Raoul said, stroking her hair, thinking that perhaps he actually did, or at least that he could come to, in time.

"Raoul, go to Paris for me." Christine murmured unexpectedly, resting her cheek against his chest. She felt his stroking hand slow. "Please?" she entreated. "Go to Paris and help Pierre and Raphael find Uriel. You don't have to look for Erik or… or anything… just go stop this Angel of Death. Raoul." She looked up. _For me…?_ she mouthed, but did not say the words aloud.

Raoul managed a tremulous smile. "I suppose," he said at length, "I can play the part of the knight again… for one last fairy-tale."

Her smile was almost worth it.


	7. Embers and Ashes

Time to close up a circle… at last, after this comes the part I have been looking forward to writing! Next chapter: the one you've all been waiting for!... well, kind of. Find out more tomorrow, right?

Disclaimer: I'm going to college next year… I can't afford to be sued. Please! As my cousin said, "Say goodbye to your memories…" Wait. That's from HP…

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter VII: Embers and Ashes_

"…_his contented silence as he watches the embers form strange fantasies to fit his dreams … charged with a thousand memories born out of the unfathomable past."_

_(Holbrook Jackson)_

In three years, Paris had not much changed, Raoul thought, staring out the small window of the coach. Day had deepened into night that wrapped Paris in her clutches. The City of Lights reluctantly succumbed to darkness. _"This time of night is what Erik loves the best,"_ he remembered Christine telling him. _"When the last light of sunset is hours gone, and one by one the houses in the city darken, and sound fades. It's dead silent then, and he walks on occasion free under the stars on the roof of the Opera. The night is so quiet, when he sings the entire city echoes it, an ethereal harmony…"_

The carriage rumbled to a halt. Raoul didn't wait for the driver to get around to opening the door, merely swung it open and leapt lightly out. The night air was surprisingly cool for July, breezing idly by his face. "Shall I wait for you?" the man queried, stroking the team of horses, who ducked their head against the tender backdrop of the night.

"No need," Raoul muttered, waving him away. "Go on, now." The man clucked to the horses, who rumbled away, until the carriage turned out of sight about a corner, leaving the Vicomte alone on the street, wondering why he had agreed to come.

Before him loomed the infamous Opera Populaire. Even burned out and wearied by three years of neglect (which, he discovered, could do a significant amount of damage), it maintained its imposing façade. It was an empty shell, now, radiating a sense of loneliness, a crumbling monument to futility. He walked up the wide, deserted steps, his own footfalls hollow and hesitant.

The doors loomed before him… or what was left of them. Charred black tendrils wrapped up about the once-ornate frames like living tentacles of decay. The paint was scorched away, revealing bare wood, raw and untamed, parts splintered clean through in the mad rush to escape the burning deathtrap the night of _Don Juan._ Now the doors hung half off their hinges, rusted and idle. So close to the structure, Raoul could feel the heavy weight of its emptiness hanging over him. Standing there, he felt rather as he thought Samson must have at the temple—he had only to push and the pillars would give way, collapsing the stone edifice upon his head, a vast grave for a single man.

Raoul shook of the image and walked through the half-ajar doors into the atrium, removing his black top hat as he went, more out of habit than anything. The space was vast, and yet the air seemed so close, heavy with dust and neglect. The atrium was a cruel parody of what it once had been. Looking at the bits of stone, wood, and random detritus scattered was like wandering into a child's senseless nightmare. Here a ballet rat's shoe, there a lady's glove; a gentleman's hat, an umbrella.

Every step rang off the stone menacingly and left scuffs in the layer of dust. It was only then, as he crossed that forsaken place, that Raoul realized that he had no idea how he was to venture to the Phantom's lair, nor what he intended to do when he got there. His memories of that one night deep in the Opera were both too cutting and too vague for recall.

So, to give himself a moment to think, he turned and sat on the wide steps of the central staircase, about halfway up, heedless of the dust. He sat, elbows on knees, hands—still holding his hat—dangling off his legs. For a moment he allowed himself to close his eyes and remember this very place, not all that long ago. As if he had summoned a dream replete with ghosts, he began to imagine the colors, the music, the movement. Elaborate dancing pairs swirled past him coyly, men straight-backed, women twirling, a confusing tangle of sight and sound. There was a welter of gold and silver, black and white—and a single solid image of red, red as fire, red as death—

Raoul propelled himself to his feet, brushing away the gossamer threads of his waking dream, as irritably as if they were cobwebs clinging unfavorably to his jacket. No time for fantasies.

He knew of two ways to enter the Phantom's domain. The first was hardly viable; falling thirty feet into a subterranean pool was more likely to see him dead. The second way, of course, was through Christine's dressing-room. Meg had told him about the mirror…

The next hour was a nightmare he didn't care to recall. Endless minutes of carefully picking his way through the dilapidated backstage, testing each step as he took it. A uniform gray blanket of dust lay on everything undisturbed. No one had come this way in all of the three-and-a-half years, he guessed. Raoul could understand why—he could almost _feel_ the structure shifting above him. One wrong breath, it seemed, and it would all come crashing down.

At length, though, he worked his way into what had once been the_ Prima Donna's_ dressing room. Here, curiously, the dust lay heaviest of all, and Raoul muffled a cough, lifting an arm to breath into the sleeve of his jacket—every step he took raised eddies of dust that spiraled up into the air, hovering insistently. The broken mirror drew his gaze like flies to the flame. He took a deep breath behind the sleeve, and began the trek across the room. Behind him his footsteps marched a clear line in the dust…like some futile mark, the treads of an archaeologist returning to study a civilization wholly ancient and foreign to him.

Raoul paused at the shattered mirror, fumbled at the catch for a moment, and at last opened it, stepping through into darkness. Tracing his hand along the wall, he was somewhat surprised when his fingers encountered the smooth glass shield of a wall-lamp. His hand slid along the surface and found a knob; hardly daring to hope he turned it, felt the rust resist the rotation, then at last give with a faint _click._

A point of light, the beginnings of a fire, gleamed, and Raoul hurriedly twisted the lamp alight more, until a perfect flame dancing within the locking chamber. He was about to check if the lamp could be detached from the wall, and if so how much oil remained, when a far-off point of light intruded on his thoughts when it sparkled into view.

It was some distance down the corridor, perhaps thirty feet, flush against the wall and perfectly stationary. Its little pool of light dappled the floor and wall a few feet in each direction. Even as he watched, a third light flared to life further on, then a fourth directly ahead, betraying a turn in the corridor.

For a long moment the Vicomte de Chagny paused, trying to reason out the situation. Was Erik both alive and expecting him? Wild thoughts of Christine and betrayal raced through his head… but his love and his sense took over. He had only just returned from Oxford, and for all the Phantom's uncanny knowledge, he could not reach so far… surely?

Perhaps, Raoul thought decisively, the ghost had come and placed these lights after _Don Juan_. Or maybe Christine herself had experienced this same phenomenon the night of _Hannibal._ Perhaps they were, somehow, keyed to light the path of any who ventured this way. The Vicomte privately changed the word _knowledge _to _genius_ in his mind, though grudgingly.

Emboldened by the thought, Raoul gathered his courage rather as he imagined the Phantom might gather a cloak, and started down the corridor (after all, his last trip to these abysmal depths had nearly ended in complete disaster). The dust was much less here, somehow, some hidden draft lifting it and spiriting it away. The stone walls glistened with just a hint of moisture as he walked through patches of light interspersed with pools of darkness, ethereal garments.

He traveled corridors, always the ones which were lit, descended stairs and crossed shadowed halls. Once he fancied he heard running water, thundering only inches away, but the sound quickly faded from hearing, making him wonder if he had only imagined it.

Given all of this, it did not take him long to arrive at the fringe of the lake. The stone "shore" was empty; here the lamp-lit path ended. If there was once a punt or boat of some kind—there was; he remembered taking it back across the lake with Christine—it was not there now.

Raoul crouched at the edge of the lake, dabbling his fingers in the water. He withdrew them hurriedly, shivering at the colder-than-ice touch that drew the warmth from his hand as if it were the malevolent spirit of some ravenous devil therein dwelling. He knew if he waded in that he would die within minutes… and it would take longer than that to forge his way first through the stone channels, then across the lake itself. And, if the gate were closed…

At an impasse, he sat back, the wall cool—but surprisingly not cold—against him, supportive of his backbone. He folded his arms close and thought, for the first time since Christine's dream.

His mind, he admitted wryly, was quite tangled over the entire affair (_I suppose love has that effect on people,_ he thought). That strange pull that Erik had over Christine had existed from before the beginning and after the end as well—'beginning' being the night of _Hannibal_, and 'end' the fire and _Don Juan_. Though, he hesitantly began to admit, perhaps the closure wasn't so certain.

It had been easy for him to accept Christine's dreaming of the Phantom in her past. Looking back, he thought that subconsciously he realized there was nothing he would be able to do, and gave up his hold on the situation entirely. It had been for the best; their love had bridged those gaps left by their pasts, smoothing it perfectly flat for an idyllic sail through life. No wonder Christine had thought it all a fairy tale.

The darkness and cold wrapped close about the emotionally and physically exhausted Vicomte, humming a melody he did not recognize… but it reminded him of England and twilight over the hills. Just before he slid into the wide lake of dreams, he fancied he could hear a bell tingling faintly from far off, a tiny replica of the toll of wedding-bells in the hills of Oxford.


	8. In a Foreign Tongue

During homeroom, I was talking to a friend in chorus; we are going to sing "Into the West" for graduation. I wasn't really listening until she said, "…and we have to send the music to Erik to play on piano." A different Erik… but _that_ woke me up. 

Martian Aries, my respect for your _"Masquerade"_ has increased tenfold… I am now in absolute awe of your Persian / Erik conversations. How did you do it!

Disclaimer: My cousin so advised me: "If you want the copyright, you gotta learn to sing like the Phantom. You know, 'let your soul take you where you long to be… only then can you belong to me.' Hey, it worked for him, right?" "Uh-huh, up until _Don Juan_ blew up in his face. I don't have enough money to pay for a chandelier." "Oh, yeah, right…"

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter VIII: In a Foreign Tongue_

"_The other day I heard about a little boy who was spending the night at his aunt's and complained about the fact that she had turned out the light. 'What is the matter with you, Tommy?' asked the aunt. 'You sleep in the dark at home, don't you?' 'Yes Auntie,' replied the boy, "But it is my own dark.'"_

_(TheodorReik)_

When Raoul opened his eyes, it was to an abrupt feeling of disorientation. The first thing he noticed in his private confusion was that the stone behind him was cold; not a particularly astute observation, but something he could grasp onto. He lifted his head blearily, trying to remember where he was and how he had gotten there. The flickering flame of a wall-lamp greeted him, something tangible, sputtering low as the oil reserve petered down to a thin film.

"Ah, Vicomte. So you are returned to the world," said a thick, heavily accented voice. Raoul, still on the fringe of sleep and unused to the peculiar inflections, shook his head to clear his mind, unable to process the oddly pronounced words.

"Excuse… what?" he mumbled, wincing at lingering aches; the floor, especially when it was stone, was not the best resting place.

"I said, it is good that you have awoken at last, Vicomte," the foreign voice said, taking care to speak more slowly, and at last Raoul located the source. The man who had spoken was only slightly taller than he (or would have been, had both been standing). Raoul knew before he looked that it would not be Erik; the voice was wrong. Now the confirmation was accurate, though it was a long moment before the Vicomte remembered back enough to recall the gleam from almond-shaped brown eyes and the astrakhan cap perched on his head. The Persian's smile at Raoul's recognition flashed white in the glow of the dying lamp.

"Wait, I…" Raoul pushed himself all the way to his feet, his eyes sliding past the man to the shore of the lake which lay placidly only a few feet away. "What are you doing here?" he said instead, gathering his thoughts.

"That was to be _my_ question," the Persian remarked. "I admit I was surprised to find you sleeping practically on the ghost's doorstep; I was rather under the impression that _I_ was the only one to return to this place, on occasion."

"I wasn't planning on falling asleep," Raoul said apologetically.

The Persian lifted an inquiring eyebrow. "Really. I did not realize this. Personally I find the cold stone beside this dreary lake quite the ideal place to rest," he said, and despite the heavy middle-eastern accent Raoul heard the sarcasm in his voice. At last coming fully awake, the Vicomte de Chagny shook his head, trying to quiet a laugh.

"I fail to see what amuses you so," the Persian remarked.

Raoul caught his breath. "Of all places to have a reunion, you and I, here on the doorstep of an archenemy…"

"Archenemy?" the Persian repeated. "Really, the ghost would most likely be annoyed, if anything, with the thought of having to bother with your return. He had rather given up on the entire situation after you last left, you realize."

"Well, neither or Christine nor I turned up missing or dead, so we kind of took the hint," Raoul said bitterly.

The Persian gave him a curious look. "Such resentment… indeed. The ghost was much… preoccupied… in those days, if memory serves."

"What with?" Raoul asked suspiciously.

"Why, life itself, dear Vicomte, as novel as it may sound when one considers of whom we speak," the Persian said, spreading his hands wide. "It seemed he had found one at last, for a moment there. A pity, really, that he was born as he was."

"Why do you refer to him in the past tense, as if he no longer existed—_had found, would have been, had given up_?" Raoul asked accusingly. "What of him now? Does he live here still?"

"Not at all, not at all. You know that, surely? Ah, but I had forgotten, you were bound for England, and would not know." Raoul found the Persian's speech was rich and quick, difficult to understand on occasion but simpler to comprehend as he became accustomed to the lilting words. "There cannot be a Phantom without his Opera. Nor more than there can be a dragon without a lair, yes?" The Persian said, fixing Raoul with an odd stare. "The end of one is the end of the other, as is Allah's will I suppose. Else the world would be full of such masked specters, would it not? Or is it anyways? I often wonder."

"Are you saying that _Erik_ is_ dead?_" Raoul asked, incredulous.

"And would it surprise you, if I said he was?" the Persian was quick to counter. "He has been counted dead for most his life; it is no new novelty, even though he breathed. You and I understand the power of such illusions, Chagny. Is there all that much difference between living death and dead death?" The Persian seemed amused by his own reasoning, but Raoul was not.

"I cannot believe him dead," Raoul remarked flatly. "Not _him_."

"Monster or man—or ghost—everyone dies at one time or another, whether they believe it appointed or not. A farmboy, a phantom; a simpleton, a genius; Uriel reaches for us eventually, you and I, and he as well. And yet, I must ask, why this sudden interest, Chagny? You hardly parted on the best of terms."

"_She_ wanted me to," he said harshly.

"The games men play," the Persian said. "Names, yes, they _can_ be dangerous, can they not? We step lightly, saying _she_ and _he_, though we know precisely who is meant. The ghost found that amusing, when he still lived. He always played games with names, he did. 'Daroga,' he would tell me, 'there was once a girl whose name was Amaranth. Her father had named her after the legendary flower that never dies, in hopes that he would not lose her as he had her mother. She was two when Erik took his life for the princess; isn't that ironic, daroga? Sometimes Erik wonders about those rosy hours, if it wasn't true there was a sort of magic in them. A very cruel magic, for Erik to steal from the father and give to his child, but a magic nonetheless. What do you think, daroga? Is there a magic in words?' I don't remember how I answered him. He would laugh now, I don't doubt, if he could hear us. Poor Erik!"

"Who killed him?" Raoul said evenly.

"And if I told you, would you be more like to slay or to reward the death-giver? Or to reward by slaying?" the Persian commented astutely.

Raoul ground the question through his teeth. "Who?"

"Why, I already told you. I will never understand Europeans. Even the ghost was foreign to me sometimes, but I doubt that had anything to do with where he was from. No, I told you; I said the Angel of Death had come and visited him. At least I believe so; it is dreadfully difficult to be certain of anything with him, but that is the way with ghosts. I was uncertain what to expect of him after what you did to him, but I need not have worried. Erik was no more."

_What I did to him? What _I_ did to _him_? What of what _he_ did to _me Raoul wanted to protest, but wisely said nothing. Christine was right, he acknowledged, but her dream had come too late. Three years too late. "Uriel, then, was it?" Nodding at the confirmation, Raoul turned to go, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"I would advise caution, Chagny, had I thought you would listen," the Persian said. "Be very cautious around the Angel. He is a vindictive character, have no doubt, and _despite what you may come to discover or believe_ he will _not_ hesitate to kill you."

"I did not expect he would," the Vicomte said, brushing the Persian aside and starting back up the corridors, lit by lamps now slowly dying into darkness.

The Persian stared after him and shook his head. "I did not think you would listen. You did not when I told you to _keep your hand at the level of your eyes_, and Allah knows how that almost ended." But Raoul was long gone.

Had Raoul not been so preoccupied at that moment over what he would tell Christine, he would have seen that his prints were the only ones in the heavy dust. He would have remembered that there had been no boat at the edge of the lake when he had awoken, and questioned exactly how the Persian had gotten to be standing at the edge of the shore, and what he had been doing there in the first place. He might have doubted the claims that Erik was indeed dead.

As it was, he emerged into the atrium just as the first glancing rays of the new day came skittering into the space through the shattered doors, leaping playfully across the floor. He walked out, blinking, into the sunlight, his mind still reeling from tiredness and his midnight escapade.

He vaguely remembered hiring a coach and directing it to the Manor d'Halier, Paris coming awake about him, stirring like a behemoth from a long slow sleep. He might have dozed off; when the carriage ground to a halt his head lifted. Yawning he stepped down from the carriage, trying to sort through what he would write to Christine, what he would say to the d'Halier brothers.

Focused inward, he had taken a dozen paces before he stopped in shock, hat to hand, at the sight of countless blue-uniformed Parisian police swarming the grounds. One, with a bit of gold pinned to his lapel, saw him and walked up to him.

"Would you be the Vicomte de Chagny?" the officer queried. Unable to properly respond, Raoul only nodded numbly. "Please, this way, Monsieur d'Halier is waiting for you."

Raoul's mind, scrambling for a reason for the surfeit of police, managed one word: "Which?"

The officer gave him a sympathetic look, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm afraid there's only one d'Halier brother now. Monsieur, if you would kindly follow me…"


	9. Loyalty

I found myself daydreaming about what was going to happen in Chapter 27 today. Is that a bad thing? It's two and a half weeks away… if I'm thinking about it that long, it had better be good when I get there, right?

Thanks to all my wonderful reviewers… it's what keeps me writing. That, and one of those strange feelings we tend to call 'obsessions'. Seems like a lot of people here have those.

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine yet. My cousin (a different one! Yay!) told me once, "We desire only that which we cannot have." "Thanks, you just ruined my life." "What's to ruin?" Ouch.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter IX: Loyalty_

"_We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this."_

_(Holbrook Jackson)_

The officer's words reached into Raoul's stomach and turned it to stone. :Only one?" he repeated stupidly, the words flashing through his mind, not a one of them registering, mute and dumb.

"Please, Monsieur le Vicomte, come with me. It would be best for Raphael were he to be met with someone he knows, and besides he has been calling for you since this morning, when his brother was found."

"Pierre… where is he, Captain…?"

"Doione. Captain Christophé Doione, of Station 24, the Opera District." Station 24. The name was faintly familiar, reminding Raoul of a dark night before the premiere of an infamous opera, of Christine kneeling in the chapel.

"Captain Doione, where is Pierre?" Raoul stopped, and the officer turned to look at him, shaking his head.

"If we knew that, there would be no need for philosophers and priests, Vicomte," Christophé responded softly. "Monsieur d'Halier, the elder, would be the one to ask, but I am afraid he will no longer be able to hear you. He stayed up late in his study last night, according to the servants, settling accounts—not unusual for him. Apparently he never had the opportunity to leave. He… or rather, his body… was found this morning. It was a one-stroke kill, Chagny, and I doubt he even knew it was coming."

Raoul allowed himself to start walking again. "Do you have any idea who it was?" He was already suppressing his instinctive emotional reaction, steeling himself; they couldn't afford tears now, though the thought twisted bitterly into him.

"There's been only one man who could do this, Vicomte, as I have no doubt you are aware. It has not been the first time in the last three years, not nearly the first," Christophé said, returning the salute of one of the officers who pulled open the door to the Manor. "Not that it is likely to do us any good in knowing. Uriel has always been… thorough."

"Surely you will at least look?" Raoul said angrily, rounding on his companion.

"Look, yes, but it guarantees nothing. We've _looked_ two dozen times or more, Vicomte, for all the good it has done. The Angel of Death is well-named, and very much at large.

"It is enough to make one wonder how thoroughly the Parisian police are truly committed to this search," said a strident voice as the two of them walked into the Halier library. Raphael strode to meet them, a raw confidence in his step that had not been there only yesterday. Raoul found himself remembering the words Erik had told the Daroga—death giving life to those who remain.

"Can I offer you something?" Raphael said, thumping a hand down on the rich dark wood of the cherry table that dominated the center of the floor. Innocuously placed was a tray with… tea. The room seemed cold. Raoul imagined Pierre drinking from that very pot of tea, last night. There was something harsh and wild in Raphael's eyes as he looked down at the tray, something that found savage pleasure in that his brother—dead—had used it.

When Raoul shook his head slightly to decline, the young d'Halier walked over to him and draped an arm over his shoulders. "I am glad you came, Chagny. Have you reconsidered my offer? Your help would be invaluable to me."

"I have," Raoul admitted, trying to ignore Christophé's curious stare. There was something all too familiar about it. He was certain he had never met the Captain before. There had been a different officer in command of Station 24 three years ago, he was certain.

"Splendid!" Raphael said, smiling too broadly, with too much enthusiasm. "Your support will be much appreciated. Pierre was rather disappointed at your refusal yesterday." Abruptly his voice dropped into a low harsh whisper. "Pierre's last words, Raoul, before I retired last night and left him awake—'we'll defeat Uriel, brother, you and I' he told me. I promised him…"

"Let me take his place, in that promise," Raoul reassured him, turning to look at Raphael, only just realizing how _young_ the other was. Almost as young as Christine, three years ago. Thankfully that wild light that had been sparking was snuffed out, but now his eyes were merely frameless windows into darkness. Raoul seized his shoulders, shaking him slightly. "We will," he promised again, his grip tightening in fear when he recognized the empty look. It reminded him of Erik.

_Erik is dead_ wandered through his mind and part of him that had been sedate began screaming in fear, thinking of dear, desperate Christine. "We'll do this, Raphael," he forced through "but I need you. I'll need you to help me for Pierre's sake. Can you do that, Raphael? Can you?" His fingers tightened until the knuckles were white.

Raphael abruptly nodded, snapping away from him by stepping back, something odd coming to his eyes—but it was better than the emptiness. By God, Raoul never wanted to see that again. A part of him squirmed guiltily at the flush of happiness that Erik was dead. "Captain Doione," Raphael said abruptly, in that hard voice. Christophé, who had been studying Raoul and was startled at being addressed, looked up. "What do we know of the murder?"

The Captain spread his hands and shrugged. "Nothing. Save that it is likely Uriel; but that you knew already."

Raphael nodded and strode away, hand tapping his chin in thought as he paced nervously the length of the library, there and back, there and back. "Thank you, Captain, for your concern. If there is nothing else you can determine, can I ask you and your men to leave? I would like to organize and remember my brother…"

Christophé sighed and removed his cap, rolling it over in his hands, refusing to meet the Halier brother's eyes. "I know what you are considering, monsieur, and it is my duty to warn you against it." He held up a hand to forestall any protests. "Let me finish. If you succeed, my salutations indeed to you. But if not… I have been called here once for a death, and I would rather not be again, but I cannot in truth see this ending any other way. I certainly hope you know what you are getting into, for there will be no backing out of it. No backward glances, monsieur."

Raoul started at the last phrase, and glanced at Raphael. But the young man smiled darkly. "I believe I asked you to go, Captain." Christophé nodded, set his hat back on his head, and spun on his heel to go. In truth, he never expected to see either of them again… alive. A pity. He had rather liked the little he had seen of the Vicomte de Chagny. The man could do better. _And they call loyalty a virtue…?_

To Raoul's astonishment, Raphael actually walked over to the table and poured himself a cup of tea. At least, the Vicomte thought, the water was steaming, so it could not be the same that Pierre had enjoyed. That last thought sickened him.

"I am indebted to you for this," Raphael said, turning from the table. "Pierre was going to be the one who was organizing this mostly, but fate has changed that, it seemed. I know we have talked to several of the others here in Paris… those still alive, that is." His tone was more bitter about this last than it had been about his brother. "Of course, they have heard by now… I expect I will have to reassure them that we are going forward. It will make everything much simpler to have _you_, the Vicomte de Chagny, there as well!"

"What, exactly, do you plan to do with this little cadre?" Raoul said, folding his hands behind his back.

Raphael hesitated with the mug of tea in one hand, his head cocked to the side a little. "End this all, Raoul. There is only one man behind it, and we are many. We will catch him. There is bound to be a pattern to the killings; once we find it, we will know when he will strike next, and then…" he made a gesture with his left hand, fingers curling into a fist.

"When that happens, do you intend to hand him over to the police?" Raoul pressed, carefully keeping his voice even.

Raphael smiled, but it did nothing to brighten the room. "Of course, Vicomte," he said in a dangerously quiet voice. "After I settle a score with him, you see. Pierre was my brother… and blood debts must be paid."

And when I tell Christine that this Uriel killed Erik, Raphael, you had best pay them quickly, or there won't be anything left of the Angel of Death to give to the police, Raoul added silently in his mind. "I suppose he shall be executed at that time?"

"Of course, Chagny," Raphael said, a bit surprised, as if it were a foregone conclusion. "A pity they can only do it once, and not two dozen times; but at least he will be on the receiving end of what he has given." Raoul nodded in agreement and Raphael turned away towards the rows of books, running a finger idly down the spines.

Abruptly the young d'Halier paused, his finger resting on one worn leather volume. "Dante's _Inferno_, a favorite of Pierre's," he said. "I suppose Uriel will be able to verify it for us, eh?" But Raoul was only half listening; a broken voice in his mind was singing _swear to me never to tell this secret you know, of the Angel in Hell!_

"Raphael," he said a bit unsteadily, "could I have pen and parchment? I would like to send a letter to Christine…"


	10. To Hold an Empire

I wonder if you realize how much your words inspire me to include things I had not thought of before. It's so awesome.

Disclaimer: See chapters one through nine. Cousin: "I hate it when people do that. Who, seriously, goes looking back for reference? Just rewrite it! It doesn't even take any more effort." "Quiet, or I will shatter you like a banana!" (physics joke… playing with liquid nitrogen… mmm)

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter X: To Hold an Empire of the World_

"_What one thinks, what one feels, the agony, the suffering, the ambition, the envy, the extraordinary confusion one is in, that is the world."_

_(J. Krishnamurti)_

"All men must die." He laughed softly and shook his head. "Yes, they must, but when? I often wonder."

In the glory days of the Opera Populaire, he had been the most iconic figure to stroll its halls, other than the Phantom himself. Chorus girls and ballet rats would notice him long enough to quickly make the sign to ward off evil; the managers would see him and look away in disgruntlement; the regular attendees had become used to his common presence, daily, even if none of them could reason out why the Persian was such an avid supporter of the Opera Populaire.

Four days after the fire, he had returned. It was a longer absence than he was used to making, the Persian admitted, and yet the tales of that night were brief and shadowed in mystery and gossip. Truth and lie lay side by side, and news was their progeny, both absolute and uncertain. It had taken him four days merely to ascertain that the Rue Scribe entrance was still intact, and indeed ran all the way down to the root of the Phantom's lair.

It had taken him twenty seconds to realize it was the ghost's lair still.

Closing his eyes now he could remember it all perfectly…

He stood on the edge of the lake, or rather the little intertwining labyrinth of channels that led to the lake, arms folded in his sleeves, looking at his reflection in the water. An experimental test had revealed it to be freezing cold; the holocaust above did little to change anything down here. For some reason that thought chilled him far more than the creeping corpselike fingers of the air. This place was untouched; the monster had created it, and only he could destroy it. Oh, the Persian had heard the tales of the mob; but the still silent waters promised him _nothing had changed, nothing had changed_, as they whispered in their course along the stony 'shore'.

It was so cold, and so silent, that he fancied he could hear that faint and far-off tinkling, the little bell in the lair that warned the monster of visitors. He stood there for a long, long while, perhaps an hour, before turning to go, shaking his head.

Another sound—the sound of wood gliding through water, the steady shift of metal on stone, halted him, and he turned for one last glance across the lake. Red light gleamed from about hidden corners, candlelight, growing even as he watched. Then a small dark shape swung into view, a lantern suspended off the prow. The Persian paused, turned, walked back to the shore of the lake, as the boat glided towards him.

The black-hooded figure guiding it looked up, the white gleam of the mask clearly visible on that face; but it was the eyes that gave him away, gold and brighter than the lantern hung on the prow.

"So it _is_ you, Daroga. I thought so. Only you would linger on a doorstep for an hour when not wanted." So the monster spoke.

"I make a point to visit the graves of friends," the Persian replied.

"Why, Daroga, you must have taken a wrong turning! Let Erik redirect you. The cemetery is out of the city to the north, on the hill. You remember the way, do you not? Or must Erik send you there himself?"

"If I went, it would be in following you, not leading," the Persian inserted swiftly. "As it would have been, had I not saved your life."

The monster leaned on the long polished pole. "Do you come here looking for thanks, then? Turn about and retreat the way you came if it is so. Erik cannot give you thanks for that, Daroga; he made the score even, remember?"

"I remember very little of that night, for which I am thankful," the Persian said icily. "I trust it is not the same with you?"

The golden eyes blinked out. "If only I could forget," he said, whispered, in a hoarse tone. Slowly the Persian's head lifted and he looked, somewhat awed, at the man on the lake, at this sudden and strange tone. "I would give half my life to forget everything." Then the eyes opened again, cold and gold and dead. "Erik finds such things difficult to accomplish. Even ghosts are limited in their power, it seems."

He was back to what he had been. Yet for a moment he had transcended himself, become something else, something _more_ than a monster… _Christine, is this the end of what you have done to him? What _have_ you done?_ "A fortunate thing, else the world would be crowded with ghosts, and find no room for men," the Persian said.

The monster pulled back his hood. "Erik tires of this, Daroga, and desires to return to his reading. A fascinating tale, about a kingdom which finds eternal bliss. You might enjoy it, Daroga."

"And what would this fairy-tale be called?"

"Ah, Daroga, it is no fairy tale, but truth! I believe it goes of the name _Morte d'Arthur_, or something similar." The monster laughed. "But come, why are you here? The book calls, and time, Erik finds, is precious. He has much of it, and little to spend it on, but certainly there are better pastimes than speaking with ghosts of the past!"

"I came because I thought you were dead, and that you ought to be seen to in death with at least more care than you have had in life," the Persian admitted frankly.

"How idyllic! Why, Daroga, Erik would have been deeply touched." It was there that the Persian first began to realize something was wrong, deeply wrong, with this situation. The monster continued blithely on. "But, the news must be broken… _Erik is dead_, Daroga. He no longer resides here. Though," the monster added, "I do believe he has in the past."

"But… you are Erik?" the Daroga said, confused.

"Yes," and then suddenly, "No." And the word was quiet. "_He I am not!_" If the air could be said to scream in agony… if a portal to the deepest pits of hell opened beneath his feet… the Persian raised his hands to his ears, but it was too late, for the agonized cry had already been loosed. "I am Uriel, dear Daroga," the man said with quiet power. And it was the man, now, and not the monster. There was more to it than the first-person pronoun replacing the third. There was another voice, another sense, almost another mind behind it all. "I am the Angel of Death. I came and found Erik mortally wounded that night, wounded in the soul, with no help of recovery. Erik exists no longer, and leaves nothing behind."

"Not even a broken soul?" the Persian said harshly.

Those cold golden eyes never wavered. "She has the Vicomte, Daroga. I am nothing but a shade of dreams to her now. And she… she is my ghost." He laughed, and the cavern rang with it, each curve and chip of stone and water catching the sound and snarling it back on itself, a great cacophony to rival the most discordant symphony. "Ghosts ought to keep company together, do you not agree? Begone then, before I decide you should join us. It would be a pity to have you follow so closely on Erik's footsteps!"

"He is there, isn't he, in your mind?" the Persian said softly, and read the confirmation in the still, golden, eyes.

Behind the mask the monster smiled. "Erik is here," the voice agreed. The Persian could not tell if it were Erik or Uriel who answered him. Then, he paused on reflection, the two were one.

Weren't they?

He opened his eyes again, coming out of that memory, shaking his head as he looked up at the tall iron-wrought fence of the d'Halier estate. The Vicomte de Chagny was within, he had discovered, but though he had come all this way he did not enter. His warning had failed, and there was no more that he could do… at this time.

The line between life and death, he was discovering, was every bit as thin as the line between _saving_ and _obeying_. A hair thin division into a void of nothingness. "I have not come this far to let you die."

Christophé, who was at that very moment walking out of the gate of the d'Halier mansion, caught the words, and thought them ironically fitting for the Vicomte he had only just left. The police captain donned his hat, swung up onto the saddle of his horse, and kneed the animal on down the street, back towards Station 24. The Persian's almond eyes followed him for a moment, standing out above the crowd in Parisian blue. Then another horseman came out of the manor, and the gates clanged shut; with nary a pause the messenger boy leaned forward over the saddle, heeling his mount on, the letter tucked safely in its belt.

It read, _Dearest Christine…_


	11. Thrice I Cried

Feeling lucky? It's a weekend. Two in one day.

Disclaimer: I claim independence as my defense! DH Lawrence said that 'it's the man who dares to take, who is independent, not he who gives'. Cousin: "Be independent and a whole lot poorer? No thanks. All credit to Those Who Come Before."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XI: Thrice I Cried_

"_Darkness closes two eyes—but darkness opens a thousand others within us. Those unseen eyes are sometimes troublesome. Yes, night brings strange fears and longings."_

_(Louis Danz)_

_Dearest Christine:_

_Has it only been a day since we parted paths? It feels like eternity! But so much has happened in those few measly hours. There is so much to tell. I do now know where to begin. Maybe with a warning: sit down. You will be glad for it._

Walking slowly across the parlor, Christine did as the letter asked her to, carefully smoothing her skirts as she sat, unfolding the letter further in her hands. It was climbing towards midday now, when the messenger boy had come riding like thunder up the lane of the estate, this little letter sealed in his belt.

_I suppose I will have to say this plainly._ The words were dark on the page, as if he had written them slowly, thoughtfully, but then the writing became more spidery and light, sketched out rapidly with fear and distaste, as if Raoul were uncertain of the wording. _I went to the Opera Populaire upon arriving in Paris. The place is much as it was when we left; burned out, teetering, a mass of stone and charred wood and dust, held up by God-knows-what. The front doors were splintered and I had little trouble getting in, though the backstage was a nightmare. Once I was through the mirror the atmosphere was different… it did not seem so like to collapse about me…_

She read quickly his narrative of the journey, forcing herself not to skip lines, to read everything, to be patient, but her heart was fluttering in her chest, leaping about wildly from within. _I fell asleep; I am not sure why. When I woke, the Persian was there. We spoke, and he told me_ here the sentence abruptly ended with a dark dot on me, then after a space started up again _that Erik is dead. That Uriel killed him._

There was more, but she couldn't read it. Those three words stuck out in her mind, blazing coals across her tender thoughts, searing painfully. They refused to retreat. Her mind screamed at her to read on, _read on!_, but she couldn't. Her eyes rebelled, refusing to slide past those three words. _Erik is dead._

"God, no, he can't be," she whispered to herself, rationalizing. "He can't be! I dreamed of him alive in England; he came and sang to me, and night closed in blissfully around us. He cannot be dead!"

_Your dream was three years too late, Christine. For the Persian—I have no reason to doubt him. I slept the night at that lakeshore, and the Opera Ghost did not come to me. He isn't there. There is no disturbance in the dust that lies thick in that place, no footsteps beyond my own. He has not come or gone._

_That is not all. Pierre d'Halier is also dead. The Angel of Death was hungry that night, bringing servants home to darkness. His brother is distraught, I think, though he hides it behind a façade of steel. Already he is organizing many of his and Pierre's friends, and my old acquaintances from the Opera days, to join us here tonight. He means to hunt down Uriel however he can. Do you know what he is calling this cadre of ours? The Parisian Knights._

_Sometimes I want to scream at him that this isn't a fairy-tale, but I don't think he would understand as you do, Christine. I only hope that this ends before someone dies. But I think we're too far in, now. I feel like a dog chasing its tail, hunting after phantoms that don't exist. God, that line I wrote—now I'm laughing over it, but it isn't a good laughter, Christine! I miss you more than words can say. Please, stay there and stay safe. I promise I shall come as soon as I can._

_Yours ever,_

_Raoul_

_Vicomte de Chagny_

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tickticktickticktick…

Some say time is the fifth element, with a power more dominating even than fire, water, wind, or earth. At that moment Christine would wholly believe such philosophy. In her mind's eye she could see Father Time, standing with his arms folded imperiously, demanding her life of her, ever demanding, drawing it away, until it slid by faster and faster and she was caught in the current, nothing to hold on to, no turning back, light blazing around her as the entire world fell into him, into this great dark shadow that inexorably ticked on, regardless of her hopes or dreams…

…dreams…

But Father Time did not wear a mask, and this man did. A perfect, white, leather-wrought mask, through which eyes gleamed like the coins the Greeks laid on the eyes of the dead to ferry them across the River Styx. A man whose death-passage had been paid the moment he was born, and he had not yet decided to undertake it.

But he had—Erik was dead. Wasn't he? Didn't Raoul say so? Didn't the Persian tell him? "No!"

"He cannot be!" _Why not? He is nothing but a man, remember? He is only Erik! _"But I dreamed of him. I dreamed… and dreams cannot lie. They can be caged, like birds, but their wings cannot be broken… I flew, on the wind of his song… he cannot be dead."

Her head lifted, blue eyes flashing with an unknown fire that made her suddenly the most powerful force existing in the world, vibrant and beautiful and untamed. But the world is such a small thing, after all… "Erik, if I have to chase you to Hell like Orpheus after Eurydice and sing for Hades himself, I will sing to make him weep—sing like the Angels he cannot hear in his cold dark realm—sing how you taught me, dear ghost, dear Phantom."

She rose.

"If I have to walk the white road to Heaven and destroy the Pearly Gates with my bare hands, spit in Saint Peter's face and turn my back on eternal paradise, I will bring that holy place your anger, the anger of the Angel in Hell!"

She hesitated.

"And if none of these exists, and there is only emptiness… then I will sing for you, and you will hear me, and you will remember me, and you will come back to me, if only in my dreams. In such a void there is only Erik. There is only Christine."

And yet…

"And yet, know, dear ghost, that I can not love you."

If anyone had heard her in that hour—if a maid had glanced in, or a servant paused by the door, or if Raoul, returning from Paris, had walked in upon her, they would have thought her mad. Had Uriel seen her, he would have killed her. But Erik… Erik might have wept.

Within an hour, a carriage had been secured and she was well on her way, accompanied only by the driver of the coach and the twin white horses, the crumpled letter clenched tightly in her fist. She went to save Raoul; she went to avenge Erik; she went to destroy Uriel.

She would end doing all three, but none of them to the one she had determined.


	12. Blue, White, and Gray

The tale changes in the telling… I am getting so much fun out of this, it isn't even funny.

Disclaimer: "

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XII :Blue, White, and Gray_

"_When a happy moment, complete and rounded as a pearl, falls into the tossing ocean of life, it is never wholly lost."_

_(Agnes Repplier)_

The ride to Paris was two and a half hours long, and gave Christine plenty of time and solitude to think. There was certainly a lot for her to think about. In the beginning she remembered England, and the three years she had spent with Raoul there. It had been a marvelous bright light in a life so burdened with darkness. She had only to close her eyes and she could see the sun setting over the countless steeples of Oxford—each college within the town had its own chapel, shrouding the place in a sense of peace, study, and sanctuary. She could hear the English breeze in the English grass, could feel Raoul standing proudly at her shoulder as they watched the English sunsets, could hear little Gerard exclaiming with a child's pure delight over every pretty stone and budding flower. Even in winter the beauty took her breath away: snow covered everything, frosting it with winter's delight, gilding every line of every building sharp as ice constructs wrought against a sweet, clear sky.

Despite it, she had missed France. This was her home, after all; she was tied to the place because of her father's grave and her father's memory. She wouldn't give that up even for Oxford's quaint ringing bells on Sunday afternoons, or the fragrant breeze that swept through the streets of the college town. So they came back; the Vicomte and Vicomtess de Chagny and their three-year-old son, back to France, to Paris, or close nearby.

The happy, fleeting years were over, though, she thought as the coach rattled along the wide road towards the city. What was she doing here? Hadn't she been content only yesterday morning, wandering the grounds with Raoul, drinking up the fullness of summer days? But the City of Lights had once again revealed its darker shade, and like the gallant young man she had fallen in love with, Raoul had rushed off to banish the darkness.

No, that wasn't right. She had asked him to go, to stop this strange Angel of Death. Why had she done that? She had sent him blindly towards death, when they had so much together, so much that would shatter her to lose. Why? For the sake of a dream?

"Why should dreams be so much more powerful than life? Perhaps because we can never have them. They remind us of what we desire but cannot attain. In a dream, _anything_ is possible. A murderer can become the most noble man ever to live. A ghost can regain life. A shadow can become a man. And death… death has no meaning." She laughed softly at her own foolish, childish words. Raoul was right; she _was_ too caught up in fairy-tales.

Yet here she was, on the road to Paris, without any real idea of what she intended to do when she got there. She would only be a hindrance to the Parisian Knights, she knew, not really helpful at all. Uriel might even seek her out; she would certainly be a simple target. She would be only a liability. Yet now that she had started, she found that she could not turn back.

Her mind slid around that track, concentrating on her past, refusing to look forward, refusing to admit that she had come because she needed to find out if it was true. She had no idea whatsoever how she was to find the Persian, _but then, more likely he will find me, isn't it?_ She was being foolish and childish, she knew, but then dreams are the same in adults and in children, and she stubbornly refused to give hers up.

A part of her adamantly denied that, in daylight, dreams scattered to nothing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The horse's hooves rang steadily on the stones of the street, steady and slow. Christophé kept his hand relaxed on the reins, giving the dependable animal its head—the horse knew the way well enough. The Captain stroked the long elegant neck, and the horse flicked his ears in reply, snorting either with satisfaction or reproach. It amused him that, like with humans, the two were on occasion nearly indistinguishable.

In his striking blue uniform crossed with the gold of a captain, he had no trouble making his way through even the crowded sections of Paris, and now this part of town was nearly empty. An occasional pedestrian passed by, looking up at him, some of the more familiar even waving. On occasion he tipped his hat to some lady walking daintily or borne in a noble's carriage, cold and cordial.

Did he break up this new secretive group that seemed to be coalescing under the leadership of the surviving d'Halier brother? The question nagged him. Little good could come of it; someone was bound to get killed, and he was rather of the opinion that it wouldn't be Uriel who has dead at the end of the day. But how to break it up? There was no justification for it, at least that he could bring into the public eye, which meant that he would have to commission the orders secretly, making it seem as if it were not the police at all. His usual way of doing that would be to send Uriel in directly. Of course, that would only compound the problem.

The real question was, did he sanction the Angel's attacks or not? He began to laugh, somewhat bitterly, when he realized it didn't matter. If he did, Uriel would sweep in and remove the leadership of the cadre, raising the anger of the gentry of Paris, and he and the police would do nothing. If he didn't, Uriel would kill anyways (though without sanction). He would still be able to do nothing, as technically the Angel didn't exist as far as the Parisian government was concerned!

Of course, there was always a third option, which was actually _aiding_ the group, a move that was likely to end up with him dead, and Uriel still at large, except killing without restraint at all. Not a wonderful set of choices. Not for the first time he wished he had been able to discover more about this mysterious figure he had encountered. Of course, regretting it afforded him nothing at all.

What a lovely situation, he thought ironically. Who dies next, Christophé? Raphael? The young Vicomte? You?

The sound of hooves and the grind of wheels brought him out of his reverie just as he was passing the desiccated shell of the Opera House. He looked up to see a young woman, not more than twenty, step out of a carriage and offer thanks to the driver, who tipped his hat and sent the team and vehicle on its way. Christophé slowed his horse unconsciously with a smooth word, watching her.

The sunlight made her beautiful. It gleamed off auburn hair, a sheen that caught the light and captured it prisoner. She had clear, lucid blue eyes, he could see—even from this distance. There was a proud way in which she held herself, upright and perfect, so that he knew she had some station—even without the cream-colored dress that hugged her figure perfectly. There was a grace to the way she had stepped out of the carriage, as well, that made him think of a dancer.

He watched, curious, drawing closer with the slow paces of his horse, as she stared up at the imposing edifice of the Opera Populaire for a long silent moment, oblivious to all else. A pair of magpies, black and white, chattered at her from the golden-gleaming statue of Apollo's Lyre on the peak of the roof. The Captain found himself emulating her, watching with strange fascination the designs the sunlight deigned to pick out on the worn-away exterior, tracing the locking bars of shadow cast from the pillars.

It was only when he looked back at her that he realized with a shock that she was crying, tears streaming unheeded down her face. He started guiltily then, feeling as if he was intruding on a moment he was not meant to have seen. His horse snorted at the movement, and the woman started, turning to look at him, her hand swiftly coming up to wipe away the betraying tears. "I am sorry, I… I didn't realize anyone was watching," she said, and there was a melodious quality to her voice that made him wonder if she sang. Surely her voice would be as beautiful as her figure.

Hurriedly Christophé swung down from his horse. "My apologies… I did not mean to intrude on your grief, mam'selle," he said awkwardly.

"Madame," she corrected gently, and looking down he caught the gleam of a gold ring on her hand.

Apologetically he bowed. "Madame," he corrected. "I was merely wondering… are you all right? I'm Christophé, Captain Christophé Doione, of the Parisian Police," he added quickly.

"Christine de Chagny," she supplied, "and thank you ever so much for your offer. I have just recently come to Paris, you see. Doubtless you know my story—I used to sing here, in this very place," and she gestured at the imposing structure, "but that was before the fire, of course. I merely came back to see if it is as I remembered… but it hasn't changed from the night I left, I'm afraid," she added rather sadly.

"Christine… _de Chagny?_" the Captain repeated, startled. "I do indeed know of that night—it was just before I became captain of Station 24, in this area. You were singing the lead role that night, were you not?" He read the answer in her lowered eyes. "My condolences, Madame. It must be difficult for you to return."

"Yes," she said softly. "I thought… I thought this place might hold something still for me, something I could find on my return and reclaim… but it appears not…" she gazed up at the lonely statue and sighed.

"Are you staying in the city?" Christophé asked, thinking he could perhaps escort her safely home.

But she shook her head quickly. "No, I—that is, we, my husband and I—have a country estate, some hours out of Paris. To tell the truth," she added with a slight smile, "he came into the city yesterday. I don't think he even knows I am here. I thought of finding him, but I'm afraid I don't know where he is. And I wanted…" she gestured hopelessly at the Opera.

"As chance has it, I met him earlier today," the Captain told her. "He is at the d'Halier estate, or was several hours ago. But—you _do_ know why he is in Paris?" Christine nodded. "Yes, well, I think that particular manor is a dangerous place at this time, Madame Vicomtess. Not that many places in Paris are safe with the Angel of Death loose…" and he started at her sudden reaction, stepping back, her blue eyes wide with fear.

"Madame?" he asked softly. She shook her head, frightened. "I could escort you to the Vicomte, if you desire, or back to your estate," the Captain offered.

"No, I… there is something I want to do here in Paris. An old friend I would like to talk to," she said, unable to come up with anything other than the truth.

"Oh?" Christophé queried. "Perhaps I can help you there, in finding him. In my position I know much about Paris, and seeing as you have only just returned… what is his name? Or hers?"

_His name is Erik, and he's the Opera Ghost, and he used to live beneath this very building, and he's supposedly dead._ "I'm afraid I don't even know what his proper name is," she admitted. "Back in the Opera we used to call him the Persian, though. I don't even know if he is still in Paris, but I would dearly like to talk to him, if he is." The Captain, to her surprise, nodded. _Of course, he thinks I want to remember my days in the theater before the fire, that I'm looking for an old friend of mine,_ she thought.

"As I said, I came the week after the fire, but many of the officers at the Station were there when the Opera Populaire was still running. Perhaps one of them knows the whereabouts of this Persian," he offered easily. "Until then, you are welcome to stay at the Station, or my home—I'm sure my wife would be delighted to have you—unless, of course, you wish to go to the d'Halier estate." But Christine quickly shook her head at the last, and the Captain nodded accordingly.

"Thank you, Captain," she said softly as he helped her mount, and took up the horse's reins to lead the two of them down towards the station.

"My pleasure, Vicomtess, to help any way I can," he replied politely before turning forward again. _Anything I can to do assuage this situation,_ he was thinking, a part of him squirming guiltily over what would likely be the Vicomte's impending death. Perhaps, he thought, the Vicomtess de Chagny would be able to persuade her husband to abandon the foolhardy search for Uriel, before he got killed.

Christine intended nothing of the sort. Of course, he could not know that.


	13. Inside My Mind

I spent a good hour today trying to decide whether I like Crawford or Butler better singing Erik's part. No definite conclusion, either… the original is better at parts like "Stranger than you Dreamt it" and "PotO", but the movie does "Point of No Return" and "Wandering Child" so excellently. Quandry! But, I have to say, in both cases "Music of the Night" is my favorite of them all.

Disclaimer: Point and cry "thief!" I know, I know. Thank you ALW, Leroux, et cetera.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XIII: Inside My Mind_

"_I say it is to wage war … with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime."_

_(Winston Churchill)_

Charles tried to conceal his nervousness in the gathering evening as he knocked hard on the oak doors of the d'Halier Manor. Waiting in the somewhat cool summer evening breeze, his feet shifted slightly and he purposely clenched his hands on his gloves to prevent them from fidgeting.

Presently the door swung open at the hand of a waiting servant. "I'm here for the PK," Charles said quickly, surreptitiously, trying to make his eagerness seem only a desire to get out of the chilling night. The doorman nodded and gestured in, and Charles ducked off his hat as he walked into the grand entryway. He handed it, his jacket, and his cane—not a necessity, more of an article—to the man. There was quite an array already hanging on pegs on the wall.

"The others are in the library—down that hall, second door on the left," the man offered.

"Thank you," Charles said, tucking his gloves into a pocket as he started across the stone floor. His footsteps weren't _really_ that loud, they only seemed to be. There was nothing unusual. Nothing at all. He found his pace quickening, and deliberately slowed it.

There were near on twelve others already in the library when he walked in. "Evening, gentlemen," he said as lightly as he could, doing his best to keep his handshakes even and friendly. "Who else are we waiting for?"

"One or two others," Raphael said. He was so young, Charles realized, astonished at the revelation. Of course he was. He had only been fifteen at the time of the infamous fire, too young to attend. But the realization stunned the middle-aged Charles nonetheless. He was too young to be organizing something like this.

But not too young to be killed for it.

Charles took a seat halfway down the table, quietly greeting those around him. Eyes met and slid away, unwilling or unable to hold each other for more than a few moments. The air practically crackled with expectancy, though the superficial words and 'relaxed' exterior studiously denied it. They all knew what they were here for, what it meant—for themselves and for the man they hunted. If it even was a man.

Charles was irrevocably certain it wasn't. Just as he was certain that this little coalition would break up after a few deaths. They hadn't the stomach for this kind of work. He meant to make the best of this situation, both sides at once—it was, after all, how he had climbed to his station in just a few years.

Perhaps that was why he had so easily succumbed when Uriel "convinced" him to attend the first meeting of the Parisian Knights. How the Angel found out, Heaven only knew.

The last few members wandered into the library and found seats at the table. Charles, swirling a glass of water (he'd need his wits about him tonight of all nights) was privately surprised at many who had come. He let his eyes wander over the group, noting who was there and who was not. Uriel would not tolerate anything less than a complete list. One did not usually survive Uriel's intolerance.

Raphael stood, seeing that everyone was present. "Thank you, all of you, for attending," he said, never looking more like Pierre than at that moment. "We all know why we're here: to correct what is perhaps the greatest wrong in this nation since the trial of Joan d'Arc." _A bold comparison, Raphael, but it seems to be working,_ Charles noted, taking a sip from his glass. _You'll end up dead anyways._ Raphael went on, oblivious to his thoughts. "The reign of terror will being its end tonight," he promised. "For three years the police have done nothing. It only proves their incompetence… and yesterday, Pierre too felt that failure. It is to us, now, to discover the identity of this Angel of Death…"

Some two hours later Charles walked out the front gate, bidding his farewells and accepting his hat and coat from the doorman. He declined the offer of carriage or escort and walked off down the road, whistling merrily and spinning his cane between his hands.

The night was cold and perfectly clear. Every breath stung his lungs, but he gloried in it—so few days ended thus! Even confined to the lit city, he could make out the bold glimmer of stars undaunted by human troubles, human fears, human failings, human ghosts…

"So they are adjourned?"

Charles stopped and leaned against the rough stone of a nearby building. "Would I be out otherwise?"

"Not openly," the voice sneered at him. Well no, not that, but there was a definite hint of contempt to it.

"As you say. Yes, they are concluded," he confirmed. "Do I get to deliver my report to a person, or do I recite it to phantoms in the airy night?"

His inquirer laughed softly. Charles willed away his shivers; it was a cold night was all. "So eager to meet death? Behind you, Monsieur," and Charles started when he felt the stone wall he had been leaning on shift beneath his shoulders.

He turned to find a perfect black rectangle behind him, a straight-edged hole into oblivion. Like any sane man Charles hesitated, until a mocking laugh from within stung his pride and prodded him forward. As the door ground shut behind him it was utterly dark, but then a match flared and touched to the wick of a small glass-shielded lamp. Its tiny flame at first seemed to do more to enhance the darkness than to banish it, but presently he found his sight adjusting.

He was standing in a small room, no more than ten feet square, with the only apparent door the one behind him. He turned to check if it was still there. Yes. Good.

The lamp rested on the surface of a small wooden table that separated him from his employer. Uriel was seated in a chair on the other side… and there was no doubt that it was indeed the infamous Angel. It was more than the pure black he wore, a midnight evening suit—the cruel parody of a priest. It was more than the black scarf that hung free about his neck, that served to cover the lower half of his face, or the gleaming leather mask that concealed the upper half; more than the ironic twist to the mouth or deadly gleam to the golden cats'-eyes… no, it was the way he held himself.

Charles's mind blindly groped for analogies, settling at last—and a bit tremulously, at that—on that immortal, dominating figure of many mythologies. Black, scaled, and deadly, a dragon crouched across the table from him… not coiled for sleep, but fully awake, jaws gleaming with teeth, wings extended, tail sweeping back and forth in rhythmic repetition. A dragon an instant from lazily extending one clawed hand and ending his life… nonchalantly.

The faintly gleaming candle burned its reflection in those gold eyes, only enhancing the aura of power… the air drew close, stifling him, until he could hardly breath, hypnotized by those eyes. In one bizarre, panicked moment, a far corner of his mind wondered how on Earth a knight killed something like this.

"Report," Uriel commanded, bringing one gloved hand up to his jaw in a carelessly powerful movement. Charles complied. Later he would not be able to remember a singe word of what he said in that quarter hour, would only find himself stumbling out of that doorway back into the night, turning towards his home with some difficulty. He could not make himself look at his payment, clenched in one hand, for fear that the light on those coins would recall him the Angel's eyes.

For his own part, the Angel of Death remained in the isolated room for a long time. "Not content with destroying Erik once, were you, Vicomte? Or do you not realize that Erik is still very much alive? But he remembers that night… yes, he does. He would not be pleased to encounter you again." Pause. "Nor would I," Uriel finished.

The twin Angels, Death and Music, smiled and as their hand curled slowly, inexorably, into a fist.


	14. Gold

Sorry this is short, but I'm in school (evil grin here). There will be another, Chapter XV, later this evening.

Disclaimer: yadda yadda ALW yadda Leroux (heheh)

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XIV: Gold_

"_Nature's first green is gold, the hardest hue to hold / her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour / then leaf subsides to leaf / so Eden sank to grief / so dawn goes down to day / nothing gold can stay."_

_(Robert Frost)_

Christophé's home was a modest affair, Christine discovered later that evening, but surprisingly warm and welcoming for all of that. It was a small two-storey flat tucked away in a corner of two quiet streets, only a few minutes' ride from the Station. Lamplight and candlelight spilled out from the square windows onto the street, small golden squares highlighting the roughly squared edges of the paving stones of the street.

"Diana, I have someone I think you would like to meet," the Captain called up the stairs when he and Christine walked in. He turned to her. "Come, come, let's make you comfortable," he offered kindly as he swept off his hat and coat and hung them neatly by the door. He ushered her into the parlor and left her there with a murmur about changing out of uniform, and promised to return in a moment.

She took the time to sit in one of the plain chairs and look about. She was surprised to find she had never even been in the house of one of the middle class. In her early years she and her father had traveled, never really settling anywhere. Later, she had lived directly in the dormitories of the Opera House; finally her years had seen her in luxury as the Vicomtess de Chagny, first in England, then just outside Paris.

The parlor was small, but there was a warmth to the gleam of wood and simple decorations that was comforting. From the pale curtains adorning the windows to the simple pictures on the walls, to the vase of flowers resting on the table, the whole place exuded a kind of… contentment. She blinked past something in her throat that she couldn't understand, looking about, seeing all the markings of a quiet, pleasant life, a life that had been denied her…

"Vicomtess?" said a rich, motherly voice, and Christine looked up to find Madame Doione standing in the parlor door; a stout woman, probably in her mid thirties, with dun hair and bright eyes.

"Please, call me Christine," the young singer said, rising to her feet.

"If you insist," the woman said with a smile. "And I will be Diana to you. Christophé told me about you. We both feel for your loss at the fire… I hope you are doing well."

"Oh, yes," Christine said, not even wincing at the half-lie. "Raoul and I are very happy. And we have a son, Gerard, not yet three. He's not with me now, of course," she said.

"Happiness for both of you," Diana replied, gesturing for Christine to sit again, and taking a chair opposite her. At that moment Christophé walked in, divested of his solemn blue uniform, looking dashing in a simple suit.

"I see you've met," the officer said, walking over to his wife and putting a hand on her shoulder. _They're so happy together,_ Christine thought with a touch of… could it be jealousy? How could she be jealous, of all people, who had two of the greatest men ever to walk this earth in love with her? No, one, for Erik was dead, wasn't he…?

"Christophé told me that you're looking for a friend of yours, from the Opera days. The Persian, you called him, wasn't it? A pity you don't know his name," Diana was saying.

"I know, it makes things so much more difficult," Christine agreed with a sigh. "That's all we knew him as, though. I'm afraid I really don't know anymore."

"Are you sure he is still here in Paris?" Diana asked.

"Oh, yes. Raoul wrote me a letter saying he talked with him only yesterday," Christine said without thinking.

"Well, perhaps your husband knows where he can be found."

"It was a chance encounter," Christine said hurriedly.

"Where did they meet?"

"…at the Opera House…" she said, hesitantly, looking from one of the Doiones to the other.

Christophé leaned forward, suddenly interested. "And what were they doing there?" he said quickly, interest gleaming in his eyes. He saw Christine's hesitation and held up a hand. "If it's something you would rather not say, then I understand. I don't mean to pry into whatever affairs the two of you have here in Paris."

"No, it's… I suppose if you know my story you know about… about the Opera Ghost," Christine said, a little weakly. They nodded. "They never did find them, did they? The police and the mob…" her eyes begged for reassurance.

Christophé slowly shook his head. "It was before I came to Captaincy at Station 24, so I know no more than the rumors say in the ranks. But no, they did not ever catch him. They went beneath the lake, found those labyrinthine corridors, but the ghost was just that… insubstantial, elusive. I wonder if he was never more than just a fantasy after all."

"No, he was a man," Christine said so softly they had to strain to hear her. "Reclusive, but a man nonetheless. He had a voice like an angel, and golden eyes…" she trailed off. "But that's neither here nor there. I just know that the Persian is here, in Paris, somewhere."

Diana looked up at her husband. "Perhaps some of the older officers might know more about him or his whereabouts," she suggested.

"They might," the officer murmured back, clearly distracted. He looked up at Christine. "Well, it's growing late. We can settle you in for the night…" and the talk turned away from the Persian completely.

When Diana and Christine were sound asleep, the Captain lay staring up at the ceiling for a long time, thinking about cold, golden eyes.


	15. An Unexpected Guest

Thanks to all my lovely reviewers—those who have been there from the beginning and the new ones. I hope that where this goes lives up to where you would imagine it could go. What was it Einstein said? _Imagination is more important than knowledge…_

All the credit to ALW and Leroux for the knowledge of Erik and his world, but the imagination… well, that belongs to us.

All of us.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XV: An Unexpected Guest_

"_I don't think anything happens in this universe except by some power—or individual—making it happen. Nothing happens of itself. I believe all events are produced by will."_

_(William Burroughs)_

Whoever said emotion was a purely physical thing was a fool. Anger, excitement, fascination—these things drove themselves through the human system hungrily, jerking the arms and legs and eyes about roughly like an unskilled puppeteer. They sent fingers tapping, men pacing, eyes roving, fixing on only one object with tenacious certainty: the clock.

Unheeding of these bodily manifestations, the needle-thin hand swept along the face of the clock at its own pace, totally oblivious of the fact that life, death, and various intermediate stages hinged on its precise but arbitrary motion. It was thoughts like these that drove Raoul to complete stillness as he watched Raphael pace the study, around and around, going nowhere.

The youngest d'Halier paused to glance at the clock, which (with customary stubbornness) had only moved the fraction of a sliver towards the looming 9. At that moment that slight motion was tantamount in Raphael's mind, Raoul knew.

At nine, the twelve knights would be returning. "Wishing does not hasten the hour," Raoul reminded his impatient friend.

"I can wish it would."

Raoul didn't bother to reply. His thoughts were with Christine. He had expected her to write to him in return of his letter, and was worried at the unexpected silence. Surely all was well, or the servants at the estate would have sent word to the contrary. Still he feared for her… he had lived in quiet denial of a great truth for three years, but he was awake to it now, knew how much her peculiar angel had been for her, if only in dreams.

Dear God, he hoped it had only been that!

He pushed the betraying thought away. How was she taking this new news? She had chosen _him_, hadn't she? Somehow, somehow, she had thought him worthy. He had been born in that moment…

…had almost died in that moment, either way she chose. He couldn't let himself forget that it had been Erik in the end who saved him. It was for her, and therefore for _him_, that he was here: here to avenge something he had secretly longed had come to pass. _Yes, Christine, I love you enough for this one gift… even against my greatest enemy of all. And if I die in this giving…_

…_if I die…_

"They are here," Raphael said from the window, looking out. The clock hummed as it struck nine. Now that the time had come, the d'Halier seemed reluctant to move into action—his energy silent, spent, hesitant—

"Come," Raoul prompted, and with a start Raphael turned away from the window. He looked at the Vicomte—and what fear was in those eyes, like a deer before the hunt!—and nodded, his gaze hardening.

The two of them met the others in the entrance. Raoul's gaze passed over them—they were all there. He wasn't really listening as Raphael ushered them into the library, quietly reminding the servants that they were not to be disturbed. The knights filed in to their places, many the same that they had taken the night before. Conversation was low and brief as they sat, most covered over by the scrape of chair on wood and the rustle of cloth.

Raphael rose, and the conversations quieted as the other members turned to look at him. The fear was gone from his eyes, Raoul noted, somewhat surprised and privately pleased. The d'Halier paused to look around the room and said—

But the door opened. His eyes shifted to it. "I thought I said we were not to be disturbed," he began, and the words trailed away.

A man stood framed in the doorway. "Apologies, monsieur," said a slightly sardonic voice, "but I was under the impression that this meeting concerned me. Please, correct me if I am mistaken."

Raoul had never before seen any man gather such immediate attention with so few words. The minds of every man in that room were seized in that one moment, held captive to a will far more dominating than any of them could claim to possess. The room was bright with the light of many lamps, a truth that made the contrast all the more poignant, all the more powerful. The difference between the bright room and the darkness that so casually walked into it only emphasized the control of the man who now, unequivocally, dominated the room.

Was that amusement that danced elegantly in those golden eyes, Raoul wondered, or was it anger?

The Angel of Death walked to the far end of the table and ever so casually leaned his gloved fists on its long, polished length. "Raphael d'Halier," he said, and Raoul felt the vibrations of the spat words run through the length of the table, up from the floor through his legs, seizing his motion and arresting any move he might make without a second thought. He felt, more than saw, the young leader of the group stiffen. "I don't believe we have had the honor of meeting," Uriel went on, so very nonchalant, so very smooth. "I _have_ had acquaintance with your brother, however." Something like fire ran through Raphael's eyes.

The Angel smiled.

Oh God, Raoul never wanted to see him smile again. He would take Hell first.

"Why this silence, messieurs? Surely I am not an unexpected guest to this little… coalition." He was enjoying this, Raoul thought numbly. He was _glorying_ in the way he held them all captive, chained to their chairs by bonds of will. God, how were they supposed to kill someone who did this to them?

"Perhaps you are startled at my appearance?" As if on cue Raoul's eyes dropped to the elegantly cut figure, in black of course, a living fragment of night walking among them. The only bit of relief was a gleam of silver from his belt and the hilt of his sword. His sword.

Of course, he meant to kill.

"Vicomte, what a surprise. I did not truly expect to find you here," and Raoul flinched at the edge of the words, the cutting line of a fierce ray of light, his brown eyes sliding upwards to meet those of his captor's. What was holding him prisoner? His fear, his wonder, his awe, his terror, his own weakness of will and heart? Why could he not rise, draw his own blade, and face this _thing_ that looked at him with the faintest curl of a sneer and a light in those peculiar golden eyes, a light that spoke of…

…of…

Familiarity?

_God in Heaven._ _He isn't dead. He isn't dead._

_Christine would be overjoyed._ Why wasn't he surprised that it provided him no consolation? Those golden Angels' eyes saw something in his that he did not even know he had revealed, and the familiarity changed to triumph. Raoul felt his own gaze dropping away, flat on the tabletop. As if a spell was broken he raised one shaken hand to his eyes.

_He isn't dead._

Water, when it falls to the ground, winds its way down slowly, finding the simplest route. It often clings to its source, unwilling to leave it, a lost and wandering child. So Raoul's tears slid down onto the palm of his hand, curling about his arm, trails of sorrow in a barren wasteland of memory. Time slid by him, pure crystalline droplets on a greased string, slipping through his fingers even as he grasped at them, elusive.

At last he tore his riveted gaze away from that far-off space which all men seek sometimes, a place just beyond the realm of sight, in a direction never noticed otherwise. His face lifted from his hand, his eyes finding themselves once again captive to the aura that had so quickly defeated all others within this small closed room.

The air hissed with power.

"I see my arrival has put a damper on the proceedings," the dragon continued, arcing a long, scaled neck, regarding the silent camaraderie of knights with those terrible eyes. Almost idly the vast pinions extended, stretching skyward, effectively seducing and dispelling the lingering light of the sun. The only light came from those eyes, now, and the twelve knights found they could not look away, could not move, could only watch.

One clawed hand closed with lightning swiftness and as quickly withdrew, leaving one of the knights no more than a lifeless pile, its breath stolen away like a summer wind. The dragon stared at them all for a moment longer, spread its wings, and leapt into the night, leaving them in darkness.

Slowly, the sun returned, fearful that its captor might extinguish it forever.

The Parisian Knights stirred from the enrapturing spell, as if they were men awakening from a strange and foreign nightmare. It is known, however, that from some nightmares, men will never wake.

So it was that Charles did not stir, but sat completely still, as if frozen. Is that not what death is? Frozen in time? On the immaculate white of his shirt was a single, clean strike. The Angel of Death, after all, killed with only one stroke.

Raoul's head dropped to his hand again and he slowly, painfully, closed his eyes.


	16. Weather

For all of you going, "where the heck was the chapter for yesterday!" I regret to admit it was lost somewhere between a graduation party and a lightsaber duel between Yoda and the Emperor. I believe I have found it again… yes, this is it.

Advance warning, this is a kind of busy weekend for me: two graduations and parties (one of which is 5 hours away), church, a birthday party for my mom, visiting my sister, and a parade to march in. If things here get waylaid, I'll be back on by Tues… promise.

Disclaimer: Me—"If I erect a temple in my back yard to them, do you think they won't mind this?" Cousin—"Maybe, but you can't, because it's already taken up by a monument to Erik himself. Me—"Blast."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XVI: Weather_

"_The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses."_

_(Thomas Huxley)_

It should be raining, Raoul thought, but the sun refused to listen and obey the demands of human frailties, and defiantly blazed down on the silent party. This was a day for anger and sorrow, not for joy… the sun should be hidden by clouds, and a cold and bitter wind blowing.

Oblivious, the golden light beamed down, and in the full-flowering trees the calls of songbirds, magpies, and crows alike smote the air. Defeated by the silent force of nature, the Vicomte bowed his head, trying to concentrate on the soft murmurs of the priest's prayer.

"…earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes," the man intoned, a strange melody to the quiet background of an earth rejoicing in its life. _Damn you, Erik. Damn you to hell._

He could have sworn he heard the ghost say, with an ironic bite of amusement, _I already have been._

The scrape of metal on dirt, the soft grunt of men lifting the soil up, the hissing cascade as it trembled its way back down again. The sting of sweat in the eyes, the salty taste of it—so like tears! If the arms could speak, what tales of woe would they tell, how many shovels of dirt had they lifted to fill a thousand graves? An uncaring sun scorched down on their unrelieved black as the funeral party stood by and watched, deathly silent.

_Does this mean Uriel wins? We have all taken up his kind and color, it seems, a dozen and more silent forms in black, even under the sky._

Raoul was the first to turn away, before even the grave was completely filled and the marker set. He knew what it read, for he had helped Raphael write the epitaph himself: **Pierre d'Halier, Beloved Friend and Brother. 1848-1874. Our Memories are Immortal.** The picture was clear in his mind's eye as he wandered silently away from the others, among the many stones and monuments.

This place was hauntingly familiar to him. Christine had often come here, before their marriage, for the grave of her own father was in this very place. Here he had come after her, to bring her away from the clutches of the lies insinuated by her 'Angel of Music', that wretched ghost who had so nearly torn them apart, and was doing so again.

"Why could you not leave us alone?" he said desperately, uncaringly, not knowing that anyone was listening; but the knowledge would not have changed the words or the tone. "Why could you not leave us alone?"

"It is in the nature of some things to remain constant, just as it is in the nature of others to change," remonstrated a nearby voice. "Wishing constants to become variables, and variables constants, is as futile as desiring that the sun shine when we dictate, and veil herself at our whim. It does not happen."

"I am not in the mood for philosophy, Persian," Raoul said bitterly, staring blindly at a weathered stone whose name and dates were long since worn away by the wind and rain. Funny, wasn't it—at one time surely this person must have been wealthy and important, but now no name remained, no fragment of memory, not even the faint scent of roses or withered petals lying dry and cold in the hand. Time forgets everything.

"It is only when one is not that the words go to heart," the Persian said, walking up beside him. The Vicomte did not bother to ask why he was here, or how he had come. He found that he did not care.

"You lied, Persian," he said tiredly. "When we met you told me Erik was dead."

"And so it is," his foreign companion said simply, cocking his head to the side. "You doubt this?"

"Last night Uriel came," Raoul said simply. "He walked into that room, and as soon as he did… the voice is the same, and the eyes, the bitter laughter, the ultimate strength of will."

"And such simple physical characteristics betray whether a man is living or dead?" the Persian queried, raising an eyebrow. "The color of a man's eyes or the motions of his hands when he speaks characterize who he is? There is a shell of a man that walks these city streets, Vicomte, but the soul of him is lost entirely. Perhaps I erred, I admit, in calling him dead. He is merely sleeping; sleeping so deep within a numbing cold that hell's fires are not enough to wake him, so deep that he hears no voice and feels no touch. Except, perhaps, one… but until then, there is nothing behind those golden eyes but darkness. What do you get when the Music leaves the Angel, but Death?"

"Your philosophy eludes me, Persian," Raoul said tiredly. "I do not have the time nor the inclination for these games. I wish… I wish we had never left England."

"You could always take her back, you know," the Persian supplied quietly, so quietly it was hardly above a breath.

"No, I cannot, and you know it well," the Vicomte de Chagny said, shaking his head. "Life may be a path, but it is not one that is retread again and again, one on which we can simply turn about and traverse back in time. No, I walked off this branching into darkness again, and only by going forward can the darkness be left behind."

"You realize that its shadow will never leave your memory."

"I do. There is always a price, isn't there, Persian? For the past, and the future." The man didn't answer; Raoul didn't expect him to. There was no reason, and no need; it was a purely rhetorical question.

"Then what do you do now, Vicomte de Chagny?" The Persian said with odd formality.

"I find Christine… and tell her the truth." He turned to meet the foreign eyes. "I tell her who Erik is… or rather, who he has become. I tell her why she dreamed of the Angel of Death destroying the opera ghost. And then…" he ran one hand over the tombstone that he had been examining, the unmarked one, worn and stained with dirt and age. Yes, time can even stain stone. "…then I let her act, as she sees fit," he said softly.

"Would you do that, Raoul?" The Persian said acutely, watching him with narrowed eyes. "If she decides she alone can save him, will you let her? England is not so far away for the two of you… to start again, go back from the beginning…"

"To lie again, and hide the truth of love behind make-believe fairy tales? No, I will not go back. I'm not perfect, Persian," and he started to laugh, darkly, at the concept. "Not nearly so. I cannot—_will_ not—simply stand by and watch her fall into an abyss of nothingness, trying to save a man is dead and yet eternally will call out to her. It had almost happened before, in this very place. Sometimes I wonder if I was right to hold back my sword. Perhaps life would have been easier if he was dead in truth. But I cannot deny her one happiness in her old memories, one pleasant dream, if that dream she does desire…"

"And if she does not desire?"

"Then he can die for all I care," Raoul spat bitterly. "Raphael can have him, and repay his 'debts.' I am free of this whole business; it ends now."

He turned to go, but was stopped by a surprisingly strong grip on his arm. "You are going the wrong way," the Persian advised. "Your wife is already in the city, and looking for you."

"Christine is _here?_" Raoul said, surprised and afraid, something lighting in his eyes. "In the _city?_ Christ, it's not safe for her to be on her own. Not with Uri—with Erik—oh God," he said, and started running.

"Vicomte, wait!" the Persian called after his fleeing form, but he was already dwindling into a small silhouette against the stony grey of the tombstones in Raoul's mind.


	17. Infidelity

I'm baaaack! Did ya miss me? Or just the daily updates? Well, I'm on schedule again, so work up some free time to read the chapters as they come up, please:-)

Disclaimer: I did a lot of things this weekend… went to a West Point graduation, a surprise birthday party, and visited a monastery, among other things… sadly, obtaining the rights to this wasn't one of them.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XVII: Infidelity_

"_Imagination is more important than knowledge."_

_(Albert Einstein)_

Christine dreamed she was running through a field of wildflowers. They unfolded around her, rose and white and green, a thousand winking eyes and bright faces. It was her first dream since the Angel of Death… a dream of life.

The tall grasses bent around her in the sweet wind of her passage, rippling outwards like the violent surface of the sea as she danced upon it. The wind teased her hair out behind her, ruffling the long curls, lighting a fiery spark to dance upon them, a sister-spark to the light in her eyes.

Then the field ceased and a vast valley played out beneath her feet, a sheer edge, only inches away. Beyond and behind her the field of wildflowers stretched on unbroken to infinity. Before her the world fell abruptly away, rock-sheer down into a seething ocean.

The wind rising up off the sea swept straight up the cliff, blowing her hair back in an elaborate halo, taking away the heady scent of the flowers and replacing it with an equally intoxicating salty tang that stung her lips. She opened her mouth to taste it and felt the song welling up in her soul pour out of her.

Maybe it was the wind's fault, so teasing and enticing above the vast sea. It irked her into competition with it, into communion with it—she had to sing. Lost in the throes of that intoxicating, pure sweetness, her blue eyes drifted down over the raging sea two hundred feet or more below, where the angry waves dashed their gnarled forms against the spikes of saw-edged rocks.

There was a ship there, a small one-man craft, its sails like white wings. On the craft there was a man, his face upturned as if to see what goddess poured out her soul above the sea. The sun was behind her, so that she was limned with heavenly gold as she sang. The ship slid towards the rocks. He looked up at her, uncaring of the looming danger. The sun flashed off his face, flashed white…

She screamed, and the rock gave way beneath her, crumbling away into the sea, and she with it. Her arms opened as she fell, fluttering like a scrap of lonely cloth—

As it is with dreams, an instant before she struck the sea the scene shifted about her.

She sat up, puzzled and disoriented, in her bed. A quiet, cool breeze blew in through the open window. "…and do I dream again?" she said aloud, herself uncertain. She cast back the coverlet and rose to her feet, pulling her long curls away from her face. "Do I dream again, for… for now…" her tongue was slow and thick, unable to properly form the words. "Now I find, the Phantom…"

"…_of the Op-er-a is there, inside your mind."_

"What is that?" But the words wouldn't properly form, even in her mind—surely then it must be a dream, for only in dreams were the mouth slow and the voice arrested. Her Angel had taught her to sing, and only something as strange as a dream could prevent that song.

"This is the way things might have been." That voice—oh God, only in dreams such as these could its timbre be resurrected so perfectly. The slight weight to _might_, the hiss on _this is_, the rich empty depth that glazed over by a rough slide of diamond tilts…

The shadows coalesced into a copy of his form, perfect in every detail. The image her mind constructed of shadows and imprinted with his likeness was so exact, so precise, she found her vision blurring—not because her dream disintegrated around her, but because it was refracted by pure, salty tears.

A cold finger brushed against her cheek, smoothing the betraying tears away. "No weeping, little angel." God, it was he. The freezing touch—so it was not a result alone of the cold cellars of the Opera: that cold existed as a physical part of his self. If he was not merely a remembered figment of her imagination, returned only to torment her…

"Dreams guide us where we would never dare to otherwise go," he whispered, lifting her chin on his fingers, tilting her up to him. "Places forbidden in the world of light and life and freedom."

"But you are dead," she murmured, the words sliding out of her before she could sensor them.

His other hand came up to her shoulder, pushing her curls back tenderly. "Do I appear to be dead to you?" he whispered. "If this is only a dream, even, Christine…"

"My dreams of you are always true," she said slowly, in hesitant realization. "If you are here, then you are alive." As she spoke the words, she smiled, and her last resistance vanished. Polar opposites, they drew together. Locked thus into the framework of his arms, she looked up at that outlined, shadowed profile; half white, half black. He was not so cold when they were this close; there was a fiery spark, an unholy burning heat in his chest, and she pressed close to its searing fires.

She fell forward into a void of emptiness; he had called her "Pandora", and desperately her soul longed to fulfill that image—what was it about reaching, desiring, that was so immortal? Cool white leather slid beneath her curling fingers.

"Do not replace this dream with a nightmare," he begged. She had to obey. She could not refuse what that angelic voice asked of her. Her hand flattened against the cool leather façade, and she looked up into those eyes—burning, burning, was this what Hell was like? Surely not, for that was damnation. _Is there not more fire in Heaven than there is in Hell? It is above the dreams of mortals. But surely not, for here I am…_

A field of electricity sparked between them, beyond either of their controls, and Christine surrendered herself completely to the hidden mastermind of this dream, letting her rational thoughts slide away, abandoned, left forever. She _felt_ now, felt the fabric slide beneath her hands, the sureness of skin and muscle beneath, even beneath that biting cold… felt the line between the cool white mask and the side of his face, a smooth and even ridge, stained glass smoothed away by the constant flow of sand… felt the hungry fire as he bent to her, as their lips touched.

_Oh God, Raoul._

Even in dreams, sinning had never felt so sweet. Sweet, and cloying; a fervent feast that left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue that she could not qualify; but she did not care, too hungry to care, too desirous of that which was before her.

Is this what it was like to have sanity slide away between your fingers? She wondered deliriously, what little rational thought she had once possessed now long gone. They parted, staring at each other over the distance of mere inches, of centuries, neither quite willing nor able to believe what had just transpired. She tasted salt on her lips, unable to decide if the tears were his or hers, deciding it did not matter.

Dreams were so sweet, and so fleeting.

His fingers touched her eyelids and obediently they closed, though she could hear every breath he took, feel the motion in the arms that upheld her, feel the heat even through that searing, burning cold that enveloped him. _His eyes were gold,_ she thought dreamily. _Pure and tempered gold._

Abruptly she woke. The plain wooden ceiling above her reflected the growing light of day through an open window, which invited a fresh breeze. Slowly Christine sat up, recognizing that she was in her bed in Christophé and Diana's home, waking from sleeping a night undisturbed.

She pushed her hair behind her shoulders with hesitant hands, looking slowly about the room. Dew had formed on a few simple flowers in a vase that she remembered from the night before. The coverlet was securely tucked about her, the door was closed, a soft breeze continuously seeping in from the window.

So it had been a dream.

Her eyes closed—whether to ward off tears of sorrow or of guilt, she couldn't decide. It hadn't been real… Erik had not come to her… and yet, did she not always dream true of him? He had to be alive. She rose on that thought, dressing quickly, smoothing the coverlet back on the bed, reaching for the door handle. He had to be alive. That was enough. They could go back to the estate… back to England, perhaps… and he would be there, still, in her dreams, and that would be enough. She left with a little smile at the thought.

So distracted was she that she failed to see the rose on the pillow… or the note beneath it.


	18. Flight

Short chapter today… graduation coming up, I'm way too busy. Don't worry, there's lots of action planned for the rest of the week.

Disclaimer: I'm not good enough to own this. Good thing, too, otherwise I'd probably screw the story up completely!

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XVIII: Flight_

"_Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before; they are calling from across a distant shore. Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face?..."_

_("Into the West" Lyrics)_

"Christine? Chirsti—oh, thank God, you're here, you're safe…" Raoul flew through the door in a whirlwind, catching his young wife up in his arms before she could react, before she could do more than return the embrace. Not that she wanted to do more. She leaned against him as he spun her about.

"I've missed you," she mumbled against him.

He laughed and let her go. "It hasn't even been a day, my lovely Vicomtess," he chided.

"A nice 'I missed you too' would be fine," she said with a mock tartness that was ruined by her smile.

"I missed you too, Christine," he replied dutifully, before laughing and drawing her close, placing a swift kiss on her cheek. "You don't know how happy I am to see that you're all right."

"I think I can guess," she replied wryly, straightening her skirts. "Though what you think could have happened to me overnight, I'll never know."

At those words, he immediately sobered, holding her out at arm's length. He was suddenly thankful that they were completely alone in the parlor of the d'Halier Estate. Raphael, in a dark and somber mood after the funeral, had said something about visiting Station 24 for records of Uriel's previous kills. The Persian had likewise vanished, but without the explanation, merely calling after Raoul that Christine would be at the d'Halier mansion by the time they returned.

Raoul looked down into the trusting blue eyes of his wife. "Erik isn't dead, Christine."

"I know," she said without waiting for him to continue. "I dreamed again of him last night, Raoul."

"You… you _dreamed_… are you certain it was a dream?"

She gave him a withering look. "Of course it was a dream. I was at Captain Doione's house. He wouldn't dare to go there, would he? Besides, it was just like a dream, full of strange occurrences and sensations…"

"Occurrences?" Raoul said harshly.

"Shifting scenes, odd emotions, dreamlike qualities. You know what I mean, Raoul."

"I suppose so," he sighed. "Christine, things are far more dangerous than I imagined. Erik… the Phantom _is_ Uriel." He caught Christine's uncomprehending stare. "The Angel of Death and the Opera Ghost are one and the same person. It's what he's been doing, ever since the Opera Populaire was destroyed."

"It doesn't make sense," Christine said in a small voice. "Why would he do that?"

"He has a history of being an insane murderer, or did you forget that?" Raoul said bitingly. "What's more, he knows I'm here. I was at the Parisian Knights meeting when he killed Charles. And if he knows I am here, he knows you are here as well… how long is it before he comes and tries to take you back? I don't want to go through that nightmare again, Christine. It almost broke me, and I can only imagine how terrible it must have been for you…"

She looked up at him, the pain of a breaking world in her eyes. "The horror, the horror," she said brokenly, and he wrapped her close.

"Come on, Christine, this has gone too far. We aren't safe here in Paris. We should go back… back to England…"

"But if he's turned into Uriel… do you think… do you think that I could _save_ him?" Christine whispered.

She felt Raoul's body stiffen against her. "I don't know," he said in a low, cold, even voice. "I don't know what there is to save. But if there is one person who could do it, it would be you, Christine. If you want to try to save him, then we will stay here. I'll try to protect you, as best I can."

She drew a long, shuddering, indecisive breath. "No," she said at last, and then, more firmly, "no. That part of my past is done with. I'm not going to risk everything we have created for a fantasy that I gave up when I left the wandering, lost child behind me. We should go, Raoul. Back to England, back to Oxford… anywhere. I miss the English hills," she said in a quiet voice.

"So do I," he said, relaxing again. "So do I, my dearest love."


	19. To Draw First BlÖod

Today's senior prom… aren't I dedicated? (grins and rolls eyes). My friend and I are of the opinion that, if you can't bring the Phantom to prom, bring the prom to the Phantom, right? Which would explain why they're all piling over here to watch the DVD afterwards. I think I need help. Do I need help?

Disclaimer: In no way, shape, or form do I claim to have rights to the Phantom. Well, in one way I do; _the Phantom of the Opera is there, inside my mind…_ but then again, we all feel that way, don't we? In chorus now, peoples… "T'ank you Leroux and ALW."

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter IX: To Draw First Blood_

"_Thus in the beginning the world was made so that certain signs come before certain events."_

_(Cicero)_

Raphael stepped out of the carriage, letting the driver close the door behind him. The latch clicked shut. If only all life was like doors; you could leave one place or memory behind, lock away everything you hated, and keep it behind you for eternity, never to have to relive it. This morning had been one of those days where he wished memory could be set under lock and key. Three and a half years ago had been another. He had only been fifteen the night of the infamous fire, but fifteen was not all that long ago, really… he hadn't been a child.

No, from that day onward, he had left childhood behind him. Maybe it was his father's and Pierre's hurried return home, clothing blackened with soot and torn, lucky to escape the disaster with his life. Others had not been so lucky. One of those others had been Jiara. Twenty-three, and a jewel to Monsieur d'Halier, and his only daughter… Raphael's older sister, Pierre's younger. Of the three, only Raphael now survived. One was slain, if the rumors were true, by the machinations of the Opera Ghost; the other by a new and dark evil, this strange Angel of Death.

Yes, how he wished the doors behind him would stay closed. Perhaps, today, he might bar them shut forever.

The home he walked up to was rather modest concerning it was the residence of a Captain, Raphael mused, as he knocked surely on the door, listening for a reply. The latch rattled back and the door swung inwards—_and into what new set of memories do I venture?_—revealing the surprised but nonetheless pleasant features of one Diana Doione. "May I help you, monsieur?" she said cordially.

"I'm looking for Christophé Doione," Raphael said quickly. "I was told down at the Station that he took Sundays off, and thought he might be here…"

"Yes, of course. He just stepped out to run down and pick up some things for me for around the house, but he should be back directly, if you want to wait." She swung the door open, inviting him in.

"Thank you… if you don't mind, yes, I'd very much like…" Raphael was saying, walking in. It was pleasantly cool inside the shadows of the house. Like an overgrown hen Diana flitted here and there, chattering away in an attempt to make her obviously nervous guest comfortable, moving little items about, rattling on about local gossip and goings-on.

"Care for tea?" and she was offering him some, practically before the 'yes' was even out of his mouth.

He settled at the table, tea cooling beside his elbow, eyes wandering across the spare but homey room, as Diana chattered blithely on about everything of precisely no importance whatsoever. Raphael politely pretended to pay attention, fingers drumming a soft _tappity-tap-taptap-tap_, a solid tattoo on the wooden tabletop.

"Excuse me," Raphael said after a few minutes, "but could you direct me to the restroom…?"

"Oh! Of course, just that way, up the stairs to your left."

"Thanks," he said, rising and turning towards the indicated stairs. One flight above the ground he turned towards the left, and then paused. He was never sure why he paused that day above the stairs… such a simple action, to change so many lives. For, in that moment of hesitation, he saw the door across the hall was open.

Naturally, he walked over to it. Some kind of guest room, apparently, and recently occupied at that. He remembered Diana mentioning something about a Christine… _Christine de Chagny?_ What had she been doing here? The shadowy edges of a plot involving the two Chagnys, the Captain, and the Angel of Death began to coalesce in Raphael's mind.

_Ridiculous._ But the thought would not, could not, be driven away. More was known by those three about Uriel than they said, he was certain.

His feet inexorably drew him closer in, until he was actually crossing the room. It wasn't until he was standing beside the bed itself that he saw the rose. The rose, and a slip of paper carefully folded, addressed _Christien Daaé_.

_Daaé? Wasn't that her maiden name, before she married into the Chagny family? Who would call her by her old name, would be able to deposit this note by her bedside, unnoticed?_

It twisted this way and that in his mind like one of those infuriating tavern puzzles, all the little bits clinking about, twisting without a hope of a solution. Then, simply, inexplicably, it clicked apart, the separate pieces obvious in his hands.

Raoul's hesitance to join the Parisian Knights, followed by his sudden compliance. Christine's shock at the annunciation of the Angel of Death. Why Uriel had addressed the Vicomte, not Raphael, the night Charles was killed. Christophé's stubborn refusal to reveal anything. Were they all working in concert against him!

The wax seal crumbled between his fingers before he even saw what it was. He smoothed the letter flat, eyes dropping to the page. The writing was odd, malformed, as if a child had scripted it, stubbornly forcing the letters to some semblance of readability. Even so he had no difficulty in deciphering what it said.

The parchment crumpled in his hands. _How very intriguing, dearest Christine. So the tensions in the newlyweds is not all imagined, is it? No wonder you and Raoul walk a fine line._ But his thoughts were merely tangents, futile frequent sidetracks, attempts to keep his mind away from what he had seen at the end. For the letter was signed.

_O.G._

_Erik, your Angel_

The name meant nothing to him, but the double-honorific changed the world. Angel. Opera Ghost. So he did exist. He had survived. They were the same.

And Christine knew where he was; he loved her; Christine, that sweet innocent unprotected girl, was the key.

Christine.

A few moments later Raphael reemerged from the upstairs. Christophé had not yet returned. "I'm sorry, I really must be going," he said quickly to Diana. "I just realized I have an appointment with one of my lawyers—dreadful people, those law officials, but it really wouldn't do to miss it. I'll have to stop by the Station tomorrow to talk to the Captain. Give him my regrets, will you please?"

"Of course, but I—" Diana stuttered, too late; Raphael was already out the door in a whirlwind of motion, calling for his carriage. "What ever has gotten into him?" she wondered, staring out the open front door as he leapt up and bid the driver all speed. "Men these days," she muttered with a little smile, shaking her head.

Minutes later Raphael burst in through the front doors of his manor. Excited by the commotion, several members of the Parisian Knights and his household staff came running, walking, or otherwise bustling in. "Where are the de Chagnys?" Raphael practically shouted, frantic. "Are they here?"

His butler held up a slowing hand. "They left, not ten minutes ago, mentioning something about attending the Sunday afternoon service, and returning to their country estate afterwards," the man began, but Raphael imperiously quieted him.

"What church, man?" he exclaimed.

"Saint Mariam's," one of the Knights said. "Why, what is it?"

Raphael couldn't prevent the smile. "Rouse up the rest of the Knights… I know how to capture Uriel. Come on, we haven't much time!"


	20. A Sprig of Thyme

I am honored by your confidence that this story will turn out well… I certainly hope so! If there's one thing I'm very pleased about, it's that my reason for writing this phic is the next three chapters, that is, 21, 22, 23. I hope you end up liking them as much as I've dreamed and re-written them over and over in my head. Thanks for your support… there is little so gratifying as getting the e-mail that states "Review Alert!" It really keeps me going, guys. : )

Disclaimer: After I've hacked, blazed, and bushwhacked my way cross-wise the Phantom's world… I still got nuttin to show for it. Thank you, ALW and Leroux, and anyone else I'm forgetting, because there's bound to be something else. Um, some_one_ else, that's right, some_one_, not some_thing_…

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XX: A Sprig of Thyme_

"_The innermost meaning of sacrifice is the annihilation of the finite just because it is finite."_

_(Friedrich von Schlegel)_

She tried to let the familiar hymns sooth her into tranquility, let the solemn and unchanging Latin words ease her mind. But every stroke of the organ keys reminded her of a man who had so masterfully wielded the instrument; the ceremonial glitter of candles recalled the same flares on the candelabras above the lake; the statues and gilding of saints and martyrs recalled similar, but far more arcane, forms that graced the darkness beneath the Opera House. At least the tears she wept were genuine. _"Deus mea lux est,"_ the celebrant recited during the homily, and to the _God is my light_ she added _he was my darkness._

It wasn't in anger or in sorrow, not really, that she prayed. Christine didn't know if there was a word for it, but she supposed it could have been called pity. "May you find your way out of that darkness," she prayed. "May you find something that your life was worth living for, something far away from me. I have been only pain in your life. Let me go. Let me be at peace, for your sake as well as mine."

If there was a God, maybe he had mercy enough to hear her, and from the dark shroud of Uriel to draw Erik out. Then again, most likely not.

When the final recessional hymn was sung, she really didn't pay attention to where she was going, confident that Raoul was beside her, gently guiding her. He knew she was distracted, and could understand why. He was always so understanding, Raoul, even when he had every right to be angry… how long until they could leave this all behind them? How far away was England? As if that country was some kind of paradise, a return to Eden, for which she longed.

Raoul watched his young wife with worried, silent eyes, carefully guiding her through the throngs of people leaving the church. It was a small place, Saint Miriam's, by the wayside, but Christine had wanted somewhere small, somewhere quiet, somewhere she could go celebrate her last Parisian Mass in peace. "Come on, Christine," he offered with a small smile, as the two of them turned down a small side street, deserted at this evening hour except for a few passers-by.

He leaned down to say something softly to Christine, which he would afterwards never remember, and looked up just as a very familiar voice said, "I trust you enjoyed the service, Vicomte."

He looked up to find himself staring down the length of a pistol. The _wrong_ end of the length.

His first instinct was to shout, "She chose _me_, Erik!" but the man holding the gun wasn't the infamous Phantom, but rather the set, youthful features of the d'Halier heir. So, instead, "What is going on, Raphael?" tumbled out.

Raphael's mouth twisted into what might have been called a smile. "Ever clueless, are you, Chagny?" he said smoothly. "I wonder how you managed to escape the night of that fire, where so many others more deserving did not."

_So it is about Erik!_ The Vicomte thought, tensing. "Something tells me you're here for more than trading insults, Raphael," Raoul said, slowly raising one hand. "Calm down and we'll get to the bottom of this—"

Raphael hurriedly stepped back, which thankfully brought the tip of the gun farther away, but not very much at all. "Oh, but I already am at the bottom of this, Chagny," the young man said with another strange smile. "I know all about your plot, so don't play innocent." He jerked his head, and rough hands seized Raoul's arms at his sides, pulling him away from Christine.

"_Raoul!"_ she cried out, taking a step forward, but Raphael's aim shifted unerringly towards the Vicomtess.

"Don't worry about your precious love, dear," he cooed. "Nothing at all will happen to the Vicomte de Chagny." A pair of Knight closed in on Christine, restraining her. "I'd worry rather for yourself, dearest."

"Christine," Raoul began raggedly, then turned violently on Raphael. "What is this all about, Halier? I have no idea what you're talking about?"

"Ah, I think you do, Raoul," Raphael went on. "See, I happened to stop by the residence of one Christophé Doione, and found this intriguing little item…" and from his vest pocket he extracted a carefully folded note. Raoul didn't need to see the handwriting to know whose it was.

"I thought you said it was all a dream," he said to Christine. She almost couldn't look at him, couldn't meet his gaze; his soul had been ripped open in that look. "I thought it was over, that you loved me…"

"_I do!"_ Christine screamed brokenly, ineffectually attempting to wrest free of her captors. "It _was_ a dream, Raoul, I swear I thought it was. I don't want this—I want to go back to England, oh God, why did this ever happen to me? I should have just accepted that he was dead…"

"So you _do_ know of him, then?" Raphael said coyly, looking between the two. "How convenient. You never really wanted to destroy Uriel at all, did you, Vicomte? The little game of deception is up, Chagny. Now. _Where is he?_"

Raoul felt as if he'd swallowed a mouthful of dust. "I don't know who you're talking about," he ground out.

Raphael's smile hardened. "Don't play innocent on me, Chagny. Where is Uriel?"

"I don't know."

Raphael sighed. "You're making this harder on Christine, you realize. I can't just… let the two of you go. Perhaps if I _keep _her for a while, you might be… inclined… to tell me what you know, Chagny?"

The two of them were wrenched in opposite directions across the street. Raoul watched, helpless, as Christine vanished into a narrow alley opposite, her eyes pleading with him. _How often do I have to lose you, Christine?_ he wanted to scream after her, but that would be useless.

"You have until tomorrow morning, Chagny, until Uriel gets written up as having another victim. A sad story, wouldn't it make, to have the girl who escaped the Opera Ghost killed by the Angel of Death? I shall be sure to wear black at the funeral. Oh, and Raoul…? Go to the police, and you'll never see the dear Vicomtess again. I can _promise_ you that."

And they left him standing there, staring after the way she had gone, not daring to follow them, with nothing to give that could bring her back. He turned away, started trudging down the street. If he went to Christophé, or anywhere near a Station, he would never see her again. If he did nothing, she would end up being killed anyways. He didn't have what they wanted.

There was, of course, only one man who did.

And so it was that with great reluctance, but no choice really, that he began—for the second time in two days—the descent into Hell. He was fairly certain that this time he wouldn't be walking out again. Corpses don't walk, you see.

If Christine was dead, there was not point in living anyways. His only hope was that he was not the only man who felt that way.

Or perhaps he _was_ the only man, and _that_ was his one hope. He smiled bitterly as he walked along, trying to follow his own convoluted reasoning. But his mind kept returning to the way motion had been entirely arrested when the Angel of Death entered the room.

Angels couldn't be killed any more than ghosts, could they? They were immortal, unlike the very true and very certain mortality of man. Raoul found himself suddenly, desperately wishing that whatever fragment of mankind Christine had managed to resurrect in Erik, the sight of Raoul would immediately submerge again, leaving only the cold and merciless killer.

He needn't have worried.


	21. Descent into Hell

Senior night tonight… I feel so busy. But here's the next update : )

Disclaimer: ME? hah!

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXI: Descent into Hell_

"…_but if it had to perish twice / I think I know enough of hate / to say that for destruction ice / is also great and would suffice."_

_(Robert Frost: "Fire and Ice")_

Leaping down the steps two and three at a time recklessly, feet skidding dangerously on the damp stone. "Erik!" He flew down the last flight of steps, sliding recklessly into the water before he could halt himself. The corpse-cold touch of the lake slowed him, mind-numbingly chilling, and he stumbled back out onto the shore.

Only then did he see the craft, innocuously moored off to the side of the stone pilings. He seized the pole resting nearby and leapt directly in, pausing only long enough to steady the craft before roughly pushing off.

How long had it been since he took a gondola down the canals of Venice? It took him a few minutes in this timeless place, muttering under his breath, to gain control of the craft.

Then suddenly he was out of the narrow stone channels and onto "the lake"—vast, cold, quiet, seething with slow and turbid mist. His strokes reflexively slowed, the words he had been shouting before not dying away in the back of his throat, possessed and enraptured by the silence, swallowed by it.

He was vaguely aware of a faint humming sound. His stokes ceased altogether and his head tilted to the side inquisitively, listening. It was such a beautiful melody, really, and it seemed to be coming from… the lake? How peculiar. He crouched down carefully so as not to tip the boat, putting the pole aside as he listened.

The siren's song wailed up from the eerie depths, slyly enticing. It was so hauntingly familiar, but he couldn't quite place it, like a song from his childhood twisted into a strange new creature he could not speak to or understand, slowly driving him mad.

Where was it from? Perhaps it was something Christine used to sing. He couldn't remember. Why did her name trigger something in his mind, something he thought he should be doing, crossing the lake? Something about…

Suddenly the surface boiled as with the breaching of a leviathan, a deepsea creature all arms and eyes and cold, wet grasp that wrapped around him, around his neck and chest, latching on and dragging him under. He had time for one desperate breath before the boat tipped and he went careening in, still in the clutches of this lake-thing. The freezing water hit him like a slap that tore his breath away, the wails of wraiths and corpses squeezing, squeezing, begging him to die.

Was he still alive? He could feel iron tentacles wrapping around him, but no, those were hands. Darkness flailed at him with a thousand stinging whips, or was that the ice-cold water frothing in front of his eyes. He struggled mindlessly for a moment, then with a little peaceful smile gave up entirely to this particularly peculiar dream. There was a burning sensation in his lungs… how odd… what could that abominably bright thing be?

A candle.

With a sudden heave he was hoisted up onto something firm and warm, so blessedly warm after the numbing cold of the lake. His fingers curled mindlessly around the stone shelf, feeling for… for what? He didn't remember.

The world fell away beneath him, or was he being lifted? Something pressed against his back, a solid hard gridlock, but he didn't care that it hurt him, so relieved to just be out of the killing water, to be out of the lake, away from that song and the clutching leviathan that inhabited those nether depths.

Something seized the front of his shirt and shook him. "Enjoying your pleasure cruise, Vicomte?" snarled a sibilant voice.

Raoul snapped back into awareness. "Erik!" he managed to gasp out.

The man in front of him pressed him harder against the grate, until Raoul hissed in pain. "Erik is dead, Chagny," the Angel of Death told him with a calm coldness more chilling by far than the lake. "Though, if you're looking for him, I'd be happy to send you on your way."

"The two of us will greet Christine then by morning," Raoul yelled back, surging forward—to find himself abruptly halted and gasping at the lines of fire across his chest, his wrists, his legs. So he had been tied to the grate. The position was hauntingly familiar; he choked back bile in his throat.

"Who?" Uriel said innocently, with a hint of a smile.

"_Christine,_ Erik! The girl you loved—"

"Angels don't fall in love," Uriel said idly, boredly, as if what Raoul was saying meant nothing to him.

The Vicomte gaped at him uncomprehendingly. "Raphael d'Halier and the Parisian Knights have Christine, and they mean to kill her by morning," he said, hoping this was some kind of joke, a cruel play by his archenemy. "I admit I'm completely useless, I couldn't go to the police, and so I came…"

"In search of a dead man," the Angel of Death said with a little smile, shaking his head. "How foolish of you, Vicomte."

Raoul stared at him, feeling his anger boiling in his veins. "I was beginning to think that Christine was right, that you weren't so much a monster as I believed you were," he began slowly, the heat in his veins slowly creeping into his voice. "I thought perhaps my memories of you were flawed, incomplete. How foolish and wrong I was! She saw a dream-god, an Angel, a magnificent Phantom, a glorious and dangerous dragon that loomed in the shadows. Deadly, yes, but powerful, and unfailing. How wrong she was! I was right—there is nothing here but a broken fragment, to distorted in body and mind to ever be more than a—"

His vision exploded in black and white, and a taste of iron in his mouth. "Next time, Vicomte, you don't wake up," said a low harsh voice in front of him. Despite the blood and the aching pain, the clinging cold of the lake on his skin and on his clothes, Raoul could almost have cried out in joy, because he recognized that voice.

"Erik, please, if we…"

"We?"

The single word cut Raoul short, and his vision cleared. There he stood, the legendary Phantom—or was it the Angel? They were one now, he thought; how ironic, that Erik go in the guise of Uriel to save what Erik alone loved and Uriel would kill—there in complete black, looking strangely proud and noble against the candles…

…proud and noble, for a monster.

"I lost her once, Chagny. Once is enough. Perhaps at long last it is the time to finish what should have been done three and a half years ago, were I not too weak to do them." He turned, then paused, looking back. "Enjoy your stay, Vicomte. I might be back… later. Perhaps after Christine expresses her thanks to me…?"

So Raoul stood, helpless, watching with cold eyes as the golden-eyed fiend picked up a few items from about his home and vanished into the shadows. The air about him was cold… so very cold.


	22. The Trial of Socrates

You thought me gone forever. Well, here I am, beating the horse… I did promise it would be finished. And here it is… fear not, it shall not be abandoned again. The rest has already been written.

Now, to close. And thank you to my reviewers, who have prodded me on into finishing this, even though I'm in college and should be working…!

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXII: the Trial of Socrates_

"_Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy…"_

_(Plato: the Republic, Book I)_

It was a hall as suited to Kings and Queens. It sprung high in all its stone Gothic glory, intricate workings on every pillar and cornice, mosaics of saints and angels in silent benefice. Dim candlelight flickered from the altar before which she knelt in silent, despairing prayer.

The demon Raphael stood at her back, his arms folded over his chest, a feral grin playing across his features as he witnessed her silent distress. Night crept towards dawn, and with dawn came death in this holy place. Her death. His grin widened, and she shivered as his hand clamped on her arm and pulled her to her feet, shoving her back against the cold stone of the altar.

His eyes drifted down over her figure in a suggestive way as he pressed up closer to her. She could smell his breath, hot and fetid, and turned her face away, sickened. He leaned forward and said, in a low voice but with a hissing edge that carried all throughout the nave: "So it is you and I, is it little angel of Raoul's?" His laugh seized her muscles in fear and disgust simultaneously, in a way she hadn't felt since she saw Erik's face. The memory made the queasiness in her stomach grow.

Raphael continued his taunting. "Ah, well, dearest, you have until dawn. _We_ have until dawn." And he smirked as she caught his meaning. _He would not dare…_ "But wouldn't I," he said, his eyes gleaming with eagerness and despise. "Right here, on the altar… how ironic… why, I would remember it even when I am in—"

"Hell?" Suggested a second voice, this one not whispered, but said loud enough to ring up and down the broad reaches of the church. There was an edge to it even despite the idle tone, and the pure musicality of that single note made her think that the owner of the voice could have surely sang the note as spoken it—perhaps he had; where had she heard such song in a voice before as this…?

Raphael spun away from her slightly, his gaze lancing down the nave. Halfway down the church, in the center of the aisle, between the rows of dark and wooden pews, he stood. Christine imagined, for one wild fleeting moment, that an Angel stood there, an Angel with black wings so vast they smothered the rest of her sight—but no, that was only the shadows cast by the flicker of the candles flanking the altar. But his eyes were right, the same gold behind the black of the leather mask that she remembered from her dreams, and the whisper escaped her lips unbidden.

"_Uriel…?"_

The man took another step forward, his grace so perfect it was painful for her to watch, but paused when Raphael raised a hand, an eyebrow lifted quizzically. Christine could barely see the dark Angel's jaw move as she spoke, so vast was the shadow enshrouding his perfect, sanguine form. "I think Lucifer would be highly amused by that encounter, monsieur, don't you?" Uriel went on, the malicious gleam of gold in his eyes. "I wonder what would amuse the Master of Torments more. Your exquisite pain when he let me have command of your punishment for such a deed as you contemplate, or my own internal disintegration, agonized and dissatisfied that I could not make you suffer enough, not if I mastered all his arts?" The Angel smirked, and the white flash of his teeth was visible, startling amidst all that darkness.

Then the golden eyes met hers, and she trembled from head to toe with anticipation and fear in one. "I fear you mistake me, _madame,_" and his tone scorched her blood with acid fire. "I do not know of this 'Uriel' of whom you speak, except as a Biblical reference. The fourth Archangel, the Angel of Death. I suppose he and I shall make acquaintance soon enough, as will the rest of this world. Forgive me if I remind you of him, but my name is Erik." The angelic voice assaulted her ears, captivated her senses, rendered her helpless in its musical throes; her breath caught, refusing to come steadily, and she barely even heard the words.

Reason forced its way through her senses. Uriel had exposed himself too soon. He was wearing a sword, she saw, and something of rope was wrapped around the sheath—a lasso, perhaps?—but he was a good twenty feet away or more. He had given away his position before he was close enough to do his work, and it would all be for nothing—Raphael had men everywhere, and now she was going to be the death of _him_ also—oh God, it looked as if she would be joining the two of them in Hell.

Then the Angel moved, one simple eloquent gesture that tore all her reasoning to shreds that fluttered from her fingers. The figure raised one arm, his right arm, straight out and at the level of his eyes. Candlelight gleamed on the intricate silver-worked steel of the pistol, gleamed on the crest emblazoned with the fanciful workings of the letters _R de C._

_Raoul…_

"Step away, good sir," came the deadly silken voice, and the arm never wavered. There was the gleam of gold, a twin set of catlike eyes, casting back the light like no man's eyes ever could. Angel's eyes, and Angels could not die. Christine repeated the words over and over in her mind, a mantra to protect her from the evils of the world that closed in as demons, claws gladly extended to tear her fragile soul to shreds.

Somehow it had never occurred to her that the recluse haunting the opera house would ever take up such a weapon.

Raphael, though, just raised his hand; and from the shadows of the columns lining the nave to either side the remainder of the Parisian Knights appeared, their own pistols to hand, their focus on the dark figure in the center aisle. His aim, though, never wavered.

"You have what you want," Uriel hissed. "Let her go." Raphael laughed, knowing that the man would never fire, not if it endangered Christine; and if the man shot him, then the Knights would kill her. He read that knowledge in Uriel's eyes.

He read it in Uriel's, but he did not know Erik, and so was totally unprepared for the man's next motion. His arm retracted fast as lightning, and then he was pressing the barrel of the gun to his own temple in the most iconic suicidal gesture ever to grace the motions of men. His golden gaze burned across the intervening distance. "As I said, monsieur," the Angel pronounced in his intoxicating voice. "I know what you want. Let her go."

Christine was abruptly propelled away from the altar. Stumbling, she caught her balance, and started walking, in a daze, as quickly as she could… she wanted nothing more to get out of this Hell in Heaven, and find Raoul, and be safe again… her steps slowed as she got closer to Uriel, and dimly realized that he was only a man, but exactly as she had remembered him in her dreams, down from the immaculate turn of his collar to the unblemished white leather of the mask… she slowed, wanted to stop, wanted him to _look_ at her, anything… but his eyes remained fixed on Raphael, and he did not so much as turn in her direction.

She bowed her head and left the church unaccosted, unable to reconcile the hot tears dripping down her face. _To thee to we cry, poor banished children of Eve… to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears…_

She turned to look back, once, and though the image blurred through her tears she remembered it forever. The clatter of the _de Chagny_ pistol as Erik tossed it aside; the dark shapes closing in, first with weapons trained on him, then lowering in contempt when he made no effort to resist; the way hatred echoed in their movements, their laughter as they took pride in the way their physical blows destroyed the angelic idol of a man who had willingly surrendered himself into their midst for her sake; the way Raphael looked up, just once, and met her eyes with a triumphant gaze.

His voice rose one last time from the circle of men that surrounded him, in a heavenly and forceful cry, as Socrates did to his accusers. His first words were lost as they pressed in on him, bent on punishing his physical form with their physical blows… but then his voice rose high enough to fill the church with an Angel's cry, and Christine ran, the sound of it ringing in her ears.

"_And as I must abide by my award, let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated—and I think that they are well."_


	23. Condemnation

I get to be evil this chapter… laughs to self. I'm glad some of you are still reading this, after its hiatus in the void…

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXIII: Condemnation in the Eyes of Men_

"_For my soul is filled with evils;_

_my life is on the brink of the grave._

_I am reckoned as one in the tomb:_

_I have reached the end of my strength,_

_Like one alone among the dead;_

_Like the slain lying in their graves…"_

_(Friday, night prayer: Liturgy of the Hours)_

Somehow she knew where to find him. Perhaps it was the _R de C_ she glimpsed shining silver on the pistol, or the fact that Erik had known where to find her, where to… _No! _She drove the thought screaming from her mind with vicious pleasure, and bent her will on each step as she took it, a running ghost in white before the dawn struck the city.

She tried not to imagine what they were doing to him, to her precious self-sacrificing angel who had thrown himself in among the demons to let her escape. She tried not to picture the mocking contempt, the torment, the physical blows, everything he had given his entire life to avoid, the very reason he had loved her, because she had endowed him with a chance to rise up above all that… except she had spurned him, and now he suffered on her account… on her account alone…

With fumbling fingers she tried to find the latch on the Rue Scribe door, but it was locked. The key… where was the key? There, on a little necklace… she broke the chain in her haste, and it took her four tries before she could jam the little brass thing into the lock and shove the hidden door back, stumbling into darkness. She caught herself, barely, and saw that in fact the oil lamp here was lit, though burning low. She picked it up, peering ahead into the gloom, hoping she could remember the way.

His first warning was the slosh of footsteps in water and a faint cry as whoever it was stumbled over something. Apparently they caught themselves, because the sound of wading through the water returned a moment later. Whoever it was, it wasn't Erik, because the Phantom moved soundlessly, and besides he knew his way about the lair so perfectly he would _never_ stumble over _anything…_

Then she appeared, an angel out of the gloom, one hand clutching at her wet skirts, the other holding high a lantern. "Christine!" Raoul called out to her, and she jumped, then she saw him, against the grate… for an instant, bile rose in her throat, and her memory flitted back to those years before, this very situation, but Erik had been there then, and now Erik…

"Raoul!" she gasped, setting the lantern down and rushing to his side. Her nervous fingers fumbled several minutes at the ropes before she managed to ease the tight, wet chords, and it fell in shambles about his form. He shrugged them away, and suddenly he was catching her in his arms, unable to believe that she was here, that she was _safe._

She melted into his arms, and for one blissful moment found Heaven on Earth. How easy it would be, just to lean against his strong figure, his arms wrapped around her, his head bent into her hair, given strength by joy and gladness and the mere thought of her being here again, his rescuer for a second time in this dank and dismal place. "Christine," he murmured into her hair. "Christine, you're alright, you're safe."

Safe from…

The thought made his fervent hug soften, made him look up, his dark eyes searching the shadowed confines of this, the Phantom's home. He relaxed somewhat in the confidence, however, that the man was not here. He knew it by the sheer echoing emptiness of the space, for when the dark angel entered, it became filled and dominated by the sheer power of his presence. Christine had returned, but he had not. The Vicomte's hands found their way to her shoulders, and he gently pushed her away from him enough to realize that not all the tears on her face were from joy.

He hated the words that left his lips. "Where is Erik?" he asked, and no acid had ever stung so much as that question. Looking up to meet his concerned eyes, she told him.

Somehow, when he had first come to elicit the elusive Phantom's aid, he had never thought that it would work out so brilliantly for him. He had never thought that it would end with him and Christine together again, together and safe, and what was more with that dangerous monster conveniently out of the picture. He knew exactly what Erik had known, had been thinking. To 'rescue' Christine from Raphael would be to ensure she would be hunted her entire life by the boy's pet 'Knights'; that she would never have a moment's true peace. But Raphael used her as bait for a bigger catch. If he landed the fish, the bait could be let free without trepidation.

Erik was the catch, of course—or rather, Uriel was, him and the Phantom. Erik just happened to be a convenient host for both of them. Hosts tended to share the fate of those that lived within them. And while the Vicomte was privately overjoyed at having that _thing_ out of his life at last, guilt twisted into him, sharper than a knife or the edge of the Phantom's deadly Punjab lasso.

He put his arm around Christine's waist and began to carefully guide her towards the door she had first entered through… towards the door and up towards the surface, where the light of dawn would be kindling the sky above the city. "Where are we going, Raoul?" she asked him in a small voice, such a little voice, trembling like an autumn leaf as the wind flies by it.

_Home, Christine. We are going to the estate, for a few days, then as swift as we can after that to England. We are going to take our son to the hills of Oxford, and sit in the English sunrise and forget the past. We are going to read to him by the light of warm oil lanterns, and tell him ghost stories, laughing and smiling and driving away this past of ours. Maybe someday we will tell him a make-believe tale of a Phantom who haunted a theater once, and he will watch us with wide eyes, and his younger sisters will whisper to each other… We are going to England…_

"We are going to Station Twenty-Four," he said, and the words burned his throat. "That is where Raphael would take him, when the Knights are… done with him. He'll be tried by the Parisian courts…" his arm on her tightened at her little gasp, "…and sentenced from there. Unless we do something about it, which is what I mean to do." For your sake. Because I know you love him, if only as something he never was, and I will not let that part of you die on my account.

The next hour or so was a blur to the both of them; hailing a carriage, the ride to the Estate, the flurry of maids and butlers gasping at their condition. It was all the Vicomte could do to insist that they did _not_ have time to relax and have breakfast, that they _must_ go back into Paris immediately. Somehow, he did not know how, dawn found him and Christine side-by-side in a private Chagny coach rattling in the direction of Paris as quickly as the driver could trot the horses.

It was a deathly silent ride for the young married couple, but each took comfort in the other as they sat side-by-side, their fingers gently interlaced, held together more by the presence of the other than anything else. Through the thin walls, they could hear Paris come to life around them, but neither moved, just sat together, waiting… waiting…

The carriage rumbled to a halt and Raoul was on his feet, swinging the door open before the driver even dismounted, helping Christine down after him. The familiar professional façade of Station Twenty-Four greeted the two, but they barely glanced at it before making for the door.

Inside it was all brusque business, but the heightened activity was clear. Men of the law moved about purposefully, brandishing papers and arguing with animation. Officers paced to and fro, or joined the discussions; people seemed to be rushing everywhere. The Vicomte and Vicomtess stood hesitantly in the doorway, uncertain how to proceed.

Then they seized upon a familiar face; Christophé, as professional as ever, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned, almond-eyed man whom Christine thought she recognized. "…am sorry, Daroga," the Captain was saying wearily, "but he is simply too dangerous. I cannot allow you to speak with him. He is, you realized, charge with the murder of well over a dozen men…"

Whatever the Persian said in reply was lost amidst the general uproar, but nonetheless Raoul fought his way across the room, Christine at his side. "Pardon, m'seiu," he said, coming upon the pair. "But I believe it would be in the best interests of all of us to see him."

The Captain turned, his brown eyes carefully neutral, and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Vicomte, but I'm afraid I cannot do that. If something were to happen…"

"You have him behind bars, under guard, and chained to the wall, what do you think could _possibly_ happen?" Despite his heavy accent, the Persian's words were dry and clear. "We aren't asking for a release warrant. We just want to be certain that you have the right man. After all, if he _is_ the Opera Ghost…"

The words were lies, or half-lies; the Persian knew as well as the Vicomte that it was Erik. But Christophé would not know that; in fact, the only one who would be able to confirm it was _actually_ him and not some unfortunate was none other than Christine herself. "Very well," he said after a moment, something like relief flickering in his eyes. "Come, I will take you to him." Raoul realized, then, that the Captain was simply a man caught behind the law. He had to do what he had to do… but surely, he wanted the monster dead? All Paris knew of the Opera scandal. There was reluctance, though, behind his eyes, that suggested his connection to Erik went further than prisoner and Captain.

The suspicion snagged at Raoul as the man led them away from the furor in the front lobby and towards the quieter back of the Station. They passed by several guards and descended a short flight of stairs into some place that must have been the cellars, before it was converted into a prison. Lamps were placed unevenly here. _Thank God,_ Christine thought, _that he likes the darkness…_ she herself felt that she would have gone insane in an hour in this place as she followed the other men down the row, past empty cell after empty cell.

The last one, though, was occupied.

Before she could stop herself, her face was pressed up against the bars, her breath was choking out of her, and it was all she could do not to cry out. She could tell he was alive only by the slow gentle heave of his shoulders. She could tell it was Erik when his head jerked up slightly at some sound only he could hear, and the light from Christophé's lantern gleamed off white leather. Then her eyes dropped to the rest of his body, and her hand rose to her mouth to choke back any sound.

_Oh God…_

"…has already been condemned," reached her ears. The men were talking in low voices.

"When?"

"This very afternoon."

"I want to go to him." She recognized, hazily, that last voice as her own. "Let me go to him."

"Madame, I am afraid I cannot—"

"Open the door and let her go, Captain." Raoul. That was Raoul she heard, though she could not turn to be certain it was him. "Give her one last chance to say goodbye."

Pause. "Very well."

The clank of chains, and the door swung back.

Christine imagined he looked up when she walked into the darkness of the cell, imagined he whispered her name. But he didn't. She stopped some feet away from him, and tentatively reached out her hand, stretching it towards his face.

He surged forward, his head snapped up, eyes blazing gold and boring into hers. He strained at the edge of the chains, but they would not relent, cutting into his wrists, and new blood trickled down his arms to join the old. She met his gaze, fearfully, and to her horror discovered there was no recognition in them. She stared into the soul of a stranger.

She took one backward step, steadied herself, and then gently pressed her fingertips to his face.

The shudder passed all the way through him, and his muscles eased, and he slumped against the wall, pressing his torn body to the cold stone, his eyes dropping closed, hiding the gleam of gold.

"…Erik?..." she whispered, wondering if he would hear and remember her. Almost praying he wouldn't. That he wouldn't die knowing it had been her fault.

She moved a step closer. "Erik?"

His eyes opened again, gaze lifting to meet hers. Words failed.


	24. Oxygen

Well, I liked this chapter, which is a good reason to post it on my birthday. Enjoy.

Oh, and apologies for the double-cliffie.

Disclaimer: We want that which we cannot have. None of these people, nor the places in which I put them, belong to me.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXIV: Oxygen_

"_Love. Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen, love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!"_

_(Christian, Moulin Rouge)_

This is what it is to be Erik at this moment.

Breathe. In, out. Air. Breathe.

Your forget your past. You forget that from Persia to Jerusalem to Paris you are wanted countless times over for death. You forget all the blood that ran red over your hands, your arms, the struggles of something desperately trying to survive as you crush the life out of it. You forget the sense of power, of superiority, killing brings. You think of air. Air.

Breathe.

Every breath you take expands your chest painfully, and your back scrapes up the wall, the slow grind of flesh on stone. As you move, so slowly, you can feel every burn and bar and abrasion that has left its mark as a scar upon your back. With each slow gulp of air your vision clears, only you wish it didn't, because sight brings you out of your mind, your own personal Hell, into the real living actuality of Hell around you.

You try to move, but you can't, and you don't know if your body refuses out of spite to respond, or if your movement is restricted that much by your bonds. You blink, and try again, but then your lungs and muscles burn and you realize you have stopped breathing and you let out the air in a rush that dims your sight and drops you back into your mind. And you feel a rush of relief at the action, because now you can't see.

Air.

Now the cell is invisible to you, blindness matching silence. You can't see the rough stone wall behind you, can't even feel the freezing cold of it against your bare skin. You know your shirt is hanging off you in tattered rags, because you can feel the edges burning their way past more recent lashes and scars in pain, but you can't see them, and maybe if you try hard enough you won't feel at all… nothing at all…

But then your body screams for air. Breathe. And the world surges back into focus, dragging you back up into Hell.

Faint light spills from somewhere down the corridor, and your lips move to whisper a plea that never reaches your ears, that it leave, but it's light, garish and cold, and it ignores you. Your sight shifts to greet the iron bars holding you in, and if you turn your head you can see the shackles that chain you to the walls. But you don't need to turn, because they've already rubbed your wrists raw, and you can feel them tearing into your flesh at the slight movement of breathing.

And as sight returns your first thought is _oh God, not this_, but you don't even try to say it, because God doesn't listen to those already condemned. Yet the knowledge that life has this irony burns into you, making you want to laugh, if only it didn't hurt so much—all that hiding to escape, and now to be caged again—but laughter requires breath, and breath brings sight, and sight hell…

Exhale. Air, rushing out of you.

You know you're condemned already by man and damned by God, but right now you only care about air. You need it, but you wish you didn't. You wish it didn't rage into you with such fury and make you catch breath when you don't want to breath—_Oh God, no, not…_

Breathe in. Stone scraping on flesh, metal digging into wrists. Air. Sight, rushing in. _God, blind me, that I may escape this earthly hell. _That mercy too is spared. Air.

It hurts, but tastes so sweet, so sweet. You realize you love air more than you ever loved _her_. And you hate it so.

Breathe out, sweet and blessed oblivion. Breathe in. Breathe out. Air.

This is what it is to be Erik, chained and alone.


	25. Logos

AN: Ok, I know this chapter can be very confusing, so please read this background first, if you have never read Plato's Republic book I. A lot of the dialogue deals with Socrates questioning the three views of justice:

Cephalus – justice is giving men what is their due (embodied in civic religion)

Polemarchus – justice is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies

Thrasymachus – justice is the advantage of the strongest.

Really you need a philosophy course to go through this… but I want the names to make some sense. This chapter is crazy.

Literally.

Disclaimer: Thank the Powers that Be that I've Noone for philosophy; this is all your fault. And my ownership over these characters has not changed in the past two days.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXV: Logos_

"_Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy."_

_(Plato, The Republic: Book I)_

He began to believe that he was insane.

He had been accused of mental instability for most of his life, so the idea of contemplating his intellectual health was not altogether new to him. 'Madman' had been used to refer to him on more than one occasion, but quiet introspection had proved the fallacy to every argument. He was simply a man driven, a man willing to go farther than any others to achieve his goal, even to the exclusion of all else. That, in Erik's mind, did not constitute insanity. It meant passion, yes; possession, certainly; dominance, beyond doubt. But insanity…? No. His capacity for reason pre-empted that option.

Which is why, chained alone in a remote cell beneath Station 24, he truly questioned whether he was, in fact, crazy. Totally, irrevocably, _lost_ in his mind.

It was the voices which gave it away first. In cheap fiction, they always were a certain sign. He had laughed at the pathetic capabilities of the authors who resorted to such devices, but now, caught in their throes, he began to wonder fearfully if there wasn't more than a bit of truth to the idea.

The voices came first, and then the images afterwards. He knew, though, that he was still holding on, as long as he recognized that they weren't real. After all, he wouldn't _really_ be visited by Angels.

Would he?

With each breath occupying every fiber of his physical existence, it was only a matter of time before it filled his mind as well. All he could think about was air itself. The way it flowed in and out of him, lifesblood itself; the way it caught his imagination, brought his sight into and out of being. The way it invited light and darkness by successive turns. Somewhere in that, he decided hazily, he must have lost himself. He remembered little, but the first apparition had been burned into his mind as he breathed, hanging against the wall.

_You're not thinking of her,_ it had said. _How long has it been since you thought of her? Hours? Days?_

"Why should I care?" he had managed to grind out, totally unaware that he was speaking to himself. His sight was dim; he couldn't see who was there. He tried to laugh, but coughed instead. The air burned instead of soothing. "I loved her, and now I'm dying, and that is the end of it. And about time, too. Life was getting rather boring."

_That's a lie._

The sheer boldness of it took him aback. "No, I assure you, without music things are hardly worth living, and without purpose life ceases to be entertaining."

_You mistake my meaning, Erik. I'm saying that the fact that you loved her is a lie. You never did. Christine was not that to you._

How dare! His head snapped up, the first conscious movement he had made in as long as he could remember, and his eyes glittered feverishly, searching the gloom of his prison, but there was no one there. The thought made him strangely uneasy. Perhaps just a dream.

_You love her less than air._

Erik had always been very good at lying. He had learned one thing; those that lie are not easily deceived. He knew every trick of the trade. He could smell a lie, taste it on the air before it was even said.

_Taste it on the _air_, Erik._

"Shut up," he said wearily, letting his head drop down again, letting his eyes close. To his surprise, the voice obeyed. For a little while.

When it came back, there were others with it.

_You love her less than air,_ it taunted him.

_And is there anything greater to you than breath itself, Erik? Anything you would trade your life for, for one moment?_

_You love her less than air._

Music.

Condemn his traitor's mind, but you cannot cut out thoughts like you can cut out a tongue. You cannot silence them like you can a mouth. His eyes opened, mere slits, and he could see them gathered around him, a circle of them… he could never count them. Three, then five, then two, then twelve. The answers never matched. "Leave me alone."

_You have always been alone, Erik,_ they told him kindly. _We're here to keep you company now._

"I don't want… your _bloody_ company," he said through gritted teeth. "Go. Go _now_."

They listened. He closed his eyes with a slight sigh, and tried to sleep. Breathe in, breathe out. _You love her less than air._

_Music._

Leave me alone.

No.

_That's a lie._

He couldn't rest, couldn't sleep. Dreams did not come to him. His eyes opened again, and he saw that they were there. "I thought I told you to leave," he said.

_Good, then you can still think. Well, think on this, Erik. You love her less than air. But you gave air for her._

"I didn't give it for her, I." He stopped.

Oh God, he did not love her.

What did he know of love? He loved her voice… he loved the music in it… the feminine Angel… he wanted her to love him, him as the Angel of Music, as the dream-master, as the man who could write… he wanted her to _sing for him_…

He wanted transcendence. He wanted _that which she might become_, not _that which she was._

And the thought that he had torn himself apart for a potentiality that could never exist… that he had torn apart all of them… he had wasted his breath on a thing less than breath was worth.

_You have a gift that no one else has, and you make it less than it is._

_You take music and enslave it in human form._

"And that one talent which is death to hide, brought with me useless," he quoted from Milton. "For what is music, some jealous goddess? What else is there to do with her?"

_That which is most good is good for its own sake._

_When the music fades, and all is stripped away, Erik, what are you left with?_

"Nothing."

_That's a lie._

"Stop telling me when I am lying and tell me the Truth!"

They didn't answer. His breath filled the chamber. Around then, he began a silent debate over whether he was insane, and stopped once he realized he was arguing with himself. He cursed his mind and damned himself to hell a dozen times over, and stopped when he realized he wasn't getting anywhere. "Wouldn't Socrates laugh?" he said aloud.

_Maybe not, but he certainly would have a few questions._

They were back. He found the prospect enheartening. That scared him.

"Well, let us pretend that I am Socrates. If I ask the right questions, will you give me the right answers?" He smiled, slightly, playing their game.

_Shall we answer as Thrasymachus, or as Polemarchus?_

"Neither," he said, suddenly becoming angry. "They were both fools, and both wrong."

_Perhaps as Cephalus then?_

An angry retort died on his lips. Cephalus, the first of the three Greeks, and the one whose account crumbled the easiest. And yet… and yet…

"Yes…" he said. "Answer me as Cephalus, then…"

The Angels smiled. _Then you know all the answers already._

His eyes closed, and his head dropped in thought. _Do I?_ he wondered to himself. He found himself remembering reading Plato's work, an elementary bit on justice, actually, remembering the days of quiet beneath the Opera House, before _she_ came. "And if I am uncertain," he whispered, "then which of you do I turn to for clarification?"

Then he felt it. A great, smothering darkness, all of _lies_ written up in a single wild testament hurled at his feet. Every muscle in his body tensed, and for one wild instant he imagined that the Angels were not Angels at all, but servants of darkness—was not the meaning of the Prince of Hell's name _light-bearer?_ The cries of serpents spat in his ears and he strained to tear himself free of the wall, to abandon this forsaken place… but his own mind held him bound, and he could not escape! Dear God, not…

And as soon as the thought formed, the image was gone, leaving him gasping and trembling and unable to reconcile his own personal revelation of hell.

_You can ask her,_ the Angels murmured.

"…Erik?"

"Erik?"

His eyes opened, slits in the darkness, full of hate the instant before it dissolves into confusion.

"Tell me, Christine," he said in a rough voice, not even noticing how the sheer wonder and power of it made her gasp and tremble, "tell me how it is that Cephalus was right. Tell me, _angel_, how he could _possibly_ be right."

She did not understand a word he said, but he did not notice, glaring out at her through gleams of gold. Looking into that flat gaze, she didn't recognize him at all. She couldn't find the Angel of Music, or the Phantom, or Uriel. There was a man there she didn't know. One she had never met, never _let_ herself meet… one who had never showed himself to her. Because lies and masks and music ride the distance between two separate objects… she had torn away the mask, he had torn away the lies, but in the end the music stayed.

He was called Erik, once.

And, as he realized he did not love her, that he did not love air, that he did not love any of it, then the music itself faded, stripped away, and it left him in the center of the board. She did not know him.

_My God,_ she thought, _he's insane._

_It seems I'm truly crazy, then,_ he thought.

"Raoul," he heard her say in a small, small voice. "Raoul, could you come and… hold me? I want to go back to England…"

The door clicked shut, leaving him alone again.

But not really.

_So, about Cephalus…_


	26. Terminus Scaccairum

AN: I hope you remain sufficiently entertained to continue reading this I own nothing, of course, except the way the words have just happened to fall on the page in this particular order.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XVI: Terminus Scaccairum_

_(the edge of the gameboard)_

"_Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellows throughout the word undergo the same sufferings…"_

_(1 Peter 5:9)_

It could be considered highly ironic that they were going to kill him by hanging.

Of course, they hardly would think so. After all, it was likely that the death of Buquet was indeed entirely accidental, and they had little reason to associate the notorious Phantom of the Opera with rope of any kind. There was even less of a reason to connect such an instrument to the infamous Angel of Death, Uriel; a sword would have been more appropriate, if they meant to drive the irony home.

But, for Erik, it was terribly ironic. For perhaps the first time in his life, though, it completely escaped him. It might have had something to do with the fact that he was currently engaged with a heated debate concerning the nature of virtue with several people who seemed to be both extremely knowledgeable on the topic, and extremely tenacious—they would not let him be, no matter how he ordered them off. So he suffered their company.

The square was packed—executions always drew crowds. Despite it all, the sound of chanting could clearly be heard cutting through the excited babble. A second irony; the square fronted one of the numerous small churches in the city; a parish that served as a chapel for a monastery of Dominican nuns. The vague time 'afternoon' had been pinned down to '4:30', which planted the deed exactly in the midst of the recitation of Evening Prayer.

It was in Latin, but Erik understood it anyways; or he would have, if he were listening.

_He rescued us_

_From the power of darkness_

_And brought us_

_Into the kingdom of his beloved Son._

_Through him we have redemption,_

_The forgiveness of our sins._

It went on, rising and falling in the background, as the guards took up positions around the platform and endeavored to press the crowds back. The people, in turn, pressed forward with macabre desire to see the spectacle about to unfold before their eyes. The love of death crossed their faces and haunted about their eyes, a pale specter done up in glittering array that flitted from person to person, glorying in the personal attention as it displayed its ghastly virtues.

The yelling and pushing increased when there was a stir from the Station entrance itself.

_All were created through him;_

_All were created for him…_

The man was escorted out, his arms bound behind his back, clearly suffering from both his imprisonment and his previous treatment, which had gone untended. Despite the obvious pain and the soldiers on his arms he managed to walk upright with a fluid, panther-like gait; his golden eyes burned into the crowds that had gathered to see him die.

But they did not shy back from his dangerous walk, befitting the Angel of Death, nor from the golden glare that had turned men's moving wills to simple stone. It was the face that greeted them that spurred them to yell louder, made women blanch white and hurriedly redirect their gaze to a safer subject, made some scream, others' faces distort in disgust.

None of it made the man stumble a single step; instead, his mouth curled into a bitterly ironic smile. What else did he expect from the flawed mess of humanity? He was the devil's child, the living corpse.

The chanting went on.

…_he who is the beginning,_

_the first-born of the dead…_

To the roar of the angry crowds he was propelled up onto the platform. He went without resisting. There were those who thought this a pathetic end. He; the Opera Ghost; Uriel himself; the Phantom; he, going without a struggle to the noose? But whatever their thoughts, it did not quell the reality of his certain draconic presence upon that platform. It could not have been more apparent than if, like a Hemming, he shifted shapes, and lashed a coiled serpentine tail; if a powerfully muscled lizardlike body contorted itself, claws like knives driving through the solid planking of the platform; if with a snap that made thunder of the air vast leathery wings extended, casting all the onlookers into shadow.

None of these happened.

The dragon remained, glaring out with terrible golden eyes, full of condemnation. Full of justice.

_Tell me, Erik; is justice truly the very health of the soul?..._

"It is you who says so," he replied dutifully, taking up Socrates's role. They didn't hear it, though, too lost in their rambling mockery of a man condemned to die. No. Of a thing already dead, consigned to the grave.

…_he who is the beginning,_

_the first-born of the dead_

_so that primacy may be his in everything…_

Christine, watching, deliberately turned her back from the crowds and began to walk away. She had been on the edge, where the press was thin, so she had little trouble. As she walked she kept desperately hoping, desperately _fearing_, that she would feel that amber, accusative, horrifyingly direct luminescent gaze burning into her from behind.

She didn't.

She did, though, hear the sudden quiet of the crowd.

There was a sudden terrible sound.

The clack of wood, the _thrum_ of rope, that made her think of the string of a violin, lightly plucked, humming with innate musicality.

There was a sudden terrible silence.

Silence bowed to sound once more as it slammed down, a heavy rising crescendo full of triumph; the roar of the crowd, more hideous than the scream of beasts begging for blood, for it was tainted with reason.

Her eyes slid shut, determined to keep out tears, but determination is futile against the greater virtues of the soul, and she cried anyway even as her steps quickened to take her away from that place, even as she thought she could faintly here the Dominicans singing the ending hymn to their Evening Prayer.

Those cursed tears prevented, likewise, her from joining into the ending hymn. Not that she wanted to. Not that she could believe in God, not after this, not after He killed an Angel in front of her eyes.

Though, granted, she had looked away.

But the dragon was gone. She could _feel_ it. Which meant… no, he had died before she had seen him in the chapel. Firmly shooing thoughts of him from her mind, she found her carriage waiting where she had left it, and got aboard, folding her hands like a proper lady, eyes fixed on some unseen distant point. She gave it a name.

England.

Only one other thing of note to this tale happened that day.

_L'Epoque_

_15 July 1874_

_Erik is dead._


	27. Lance

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XVII: Lance_

"_Rescue me, Lord, from my enemies;_

_I have fled to you for refuge."_

_(Tuesday Night Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours)_

_Twenty-six years later,_

_just outside Paris; _

_a small town in the French countryside._

He stared at the rough-hewn shape, running gentle, dexterous fingers over its unresolved form. His hands caressed the t-shape, flowing over where the arms would be, their wrists mercilessly pinned against the wood with heavy iron nails; they trailed along the bent lines of where the legs would show every strain and tremble in their muscles as they tried to support His weight, to save Him from suffocation, regardless of the way the flesh of the feet would tear from the impossible task… his thumb drew a soft curve over where His head would rest, bowed, against His chest, as He uttered up that final cry:

"_Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"_

His lips parted ever so slightly as he breathed the words that the Christ had uttered at his last; eyes that had gleamed with hate and anger and passion now sparked with love, the kind of love that comes only at the uttermost end of pain, when all else in the world is lost and only this remains.

The only kind of love that he believed in, now. True love. Perfect love. Unconsciously his hand rose to the black scar that ran around his throat, just beneath the Roman collar of his garb. The edge was startlingly rough beneath his fingers… funny, you would think with all the scars he bore…

The priest bowed his head slightly, his hands hovering over the rough-hewn outlines that would one day become the form of the Crucified Lord, guided into being beneath his skilled artisan's fingers. His eyes closed, hiding the gleam of gold behind shut eyelids, and he breathed; and how sweet the air was that moved into his mouth and his lungs, filling him: _this is the air I breathe; Your holy presence, living in me…_

Unbidden, before he began his work, his hands closed themselves in prayer, and he found the words flowing smoothly from his mouth—he, who had uttered obscenities and laughed at the death he dealt. They passed from him on the breath of air he had drawn in:

"I confess, to Almighty God..." and how strange the words would have been at one time. He had never believed in God. "…and to you, my brothers and sisters…" It did not matter that he was alone in the Church at that time. The sentiment was the same, here or elsewhere. He had always been a single child, a lonely man, condemned to a prison the world placed about him, one he had angrily reinforced. "…that I have sinned, through my own fault—" _yes, mine, all mine, not God's; I cannot place the blame on Him!_ "—in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do…" _And in which case, Adonai, are my sins the worse? …oh God, oh God, you would have every right to abandon me, to condemn me to my prison of darkness as I so vainly thought you had, in those days of ignorance…_ "…and I ask blessed Mary, ever Virgin, all the Angels and Saints," _and I do not number among them! How foolish now my game seems to me._ "…and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God…" he finished the prayer on a slow breath.

His eyes opened, fixed onto the form that had led him out of Hell and refooted him on Earth, looking longingly towards the sky, praying desperately for the forgiveness so often toted and so rarely seen. His golden gaze locked onto where the eyes would be, if the crucifix were completed, searching desperately for the look that would tell him _My trust is eternal; if you stumble I shall lift you up; if you knock I shall answer._ He must have found it, for he smiled; not a hard, bitter smile, but a softening, the edge of joy, the heart of sorrow.

He had come a long, long way.

Death does that to people… with her, wrapping her loving hands about his throat… his shoulders tensed at the memory, and he deliberately forced his mind away from that moment. No! not now! He would forget how those moments had gone… his golden gaze connecting with familiar almond eyes… snapping sideways into the youthful face of none other than the Vicomte de Chagny himself.

That sudden terrible silence.

The roar of the crowds, covering the screams and shots and the fight that erupted in bloody violence in the middle of the Parisian streets. Their blood, also, on his hands.

Water is stronger than blood, he convinced himself softly.

…_and I ask blessed Mary, ever Virgin…_

He picked up the chisel and carefully set it to the joint of cross and shoulder and began the slow process of laboring away, turning the rough wood into the figure that would stand at the back of the Church in silent testament to the _true_ meaning of love eternal.

He wasn't even aware that he began to pray, softly, chanting the words: _Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee… blessed art thou among women…_

They came up to the entrance of the wayside church. They came with the thunder of hooves. They came with the clank of arms, and the snort of horses. They came with war, and death, and justice; with vengeance in one hand and the law in the other and their duty hanging over their heads. Seven they came, six in the uniforms of the Parisian Police and one in the fine cloth of its aristocracy. The courtyard, once overrun, was filled now with quiet flowers; the walls of the church were clean, the windows repaired and fitted with bright glass that displayed a myriad of colors, dazzling the eye too much to decipher its pictures.

They came, these seven, and found the doors of Our Lady's Shrine wide open to welcome them in. But they did not enter; written above the doors, boldly carved stone from stone, glittered the words:

HE WHO BELIEVES IN ME SHALL NOT DIE

From the entranceway, the seven trespassers on holy ground could see deep into the heart of the nave; the altar was framed, its gray marble sheathed in holy white. Off to the left, somewhere in the gloom, a red candle flickered, marking that the place was not empty; it was His house, after all.

And _his_ as well; it was for _him_ that they had come, after all. He stood before the altar, his back to them, seemingly bent to the work that occupied his hands; a rough figure, vaguely cross-like, propped up against the sacrificial stone, across which his hands glided like doves, sweet and gentle, the dichotomy of the natures of the artist and the sculpted striking in its absoluteness.

His back was to them, and his head bent slightly, exposing no more than the unrelieved black of his priestly attire, and the black of his hair—greying now—set against it. They didn't need for him to turn, though; they knew that if he did, they would find a pair of golden eyes gazing at them from behind the comfort of a shielding white mask. They knew who he was.

Six pairs of feet stopped uncertainly upon the threshold. The owner of the seventh turned to look at them. "Why do you recoil?" Raphael d'Halier said in a dark voice. His black gaze fell on one of the six, the one whose pins and emblems marked him as a Captain among them.

"I will not bring Death into the House of God," was Christophe's quiet answer.

"God does not live here," the d'Halier, no longer young, sneered. "If He exists at all. I tend to doubt it. But if He did, then He would praise you, not punish you, for bringing justice to one such as this monster who cowers in His house."

The Captain steadfastly met his gaze. His face was more careworn, his hair flecked with silver; but he might have been the same man. "I will not apprehend him," the man said, lifting his chin slightly in defiance. "He is a Priest of the Church, a Holy Father, and I will not touch him."

Raphael's expression twisted into a sneer. "Very well, good sir," he spat. "I shall be informing the Parisian officials of this… turn of events."

"You do that, monsieur," Christophe said, perfectly evenly.

Raphael spun, his hand going to his pistol, and he stalked into the church, a blind eye to the quiet, simple beauty of the place. He scanned it almost contemptuously, then fixed his dark eyes on the man standing at the far end. He stopped, and his hand rose to the level of his eyes, pistol up and ready to fire. Along the sights, he took careful aim.

_One shot,_ he thought. _I'll bring this fairy-tale to an end in one single shot. God knows it's more than that monster deserves…_

Erik paused to flex his fingers and look over his work. It was almost done; it was rough-hewn, yet, but that was how he intended it to be, to show the unfinished nature of humanity itself. Only the face was complete, complete and perfect in an expression of Christ's innate divinity. He had chiseled the lines so that the entire sculpture flowed into it, one vast surge upwards towards pain and suffering, and then beyond… to God Himself.

Only one thing remained; the mark on Jesus' side, where the spear had pierced his flesh, bringing forth both blood and water in a holy mix that was repeated hour by hour across the world as Mass was celebrated… here was the most important wound, the one that had proven His death, and thus secured his return in Everlasting Life… Erik's eyes closed, and he found his hand was trembling. That was no good. He could not make this most important of marks if his hand was uncertain… it had to be perfect… he drew in a slow breath, and opened his eyes, positioning the chisel, lifting the hammer carefully.

_Crack._

For an instant he thought that his stroke had gone astray, that he had struck the statue in the wrong place, and ruined it utterly. But then the pain blossomed in his ribs, gnawing away, like fire… it seared into him, every bit of his being and his mind in absolute agony, Fire Incarnate, shifting his bones to coals and his blood to living lava…

His hand trembled uncontrollably, and the tools fell from his grasp, clattering like death knells on the floor, wood on stone, wood on stone… he staggered, swayed, and at last succumbed, the shock of his knees hitting the floor jarring the bars of flaming coal that were his bones, almost making him cry out with sheer agony. His hand sought his chest, and came away red with his own blood… he tore his eyes up and away from it, somehow, with strength he didn't realize.

_I must… finish it…_ hands groped blindly, sliding along the arms of the crucifix, painting it with his own blood, searching. Things slid in and out of focus, and he couldn't seem to control his arms. They wanted to do their own things, not what his mind demanded of them, and he had to grit his teeth and force them to slide along, searching… numb fingers fumbled blindly across the figure, and he forgot what he was searching for.

There, a nick perhaps an inch long, deep and smooth, beneath his fingers; the wound that proved Christ's death. His strength gave way completely, and the floor rose gently to meet him, catching him in loving arms of the softest stone… so warm against him, gently lifting him away; and in his mind, his prayer finished.

_Now, and at the hour of our deaths…_

Raphael stared down the barrel of the pistol he had fired and let it fall from nerveless fingers; when the Opera Ghost had fallen, he had found himself glaring down its length, aiming unerringly at Jesus Crucified. The d'Halier brother took a step back, then another, and turned and fled from the church; and the place was silent, undisturbed by the slightest sound, by the faintest echo or breath of life.


	28. Epitaph

Disclaimer: don't, didn't, and never will.

**Of Knights and Dragons**

_Chapter XXVIII: Epitaph_

"_We surely say that a decent man doesn't think that death is a terrible thing for someone decent to suffer—even for someone who happens to be his friend."_

_(Socrates)_

They say that there were only four people at the funeral: a tall man with dark skin and almond eyes; a reserved gentleman in the deep blue of the Parisian police; and two others, both them priests… one of them dead. They lowered his mahogany casket in, replaced the dirt, and set the marker, and said a few quiet words and a prayer; then the priest blessed the simple place, and the others turned and left, and that was all.

They say that, if you go searching north of Paris in the countryside, even today, you might find an old dilapidated church, its windows long grimed over, the carving above the door nearly worn away, the altar cloth tattered, the stone stained underneath; but resting on the back wall is a most beautiful piece of art, simple and breathtaking in its design, though it is only a crucifix, like any that hangs in a million other churches across the world. Mass is still said there, on Sunday mornings, to a tiny congregation…

They say that if you go out behind that church, you will find a single grave marked with a simple stone.

ERIK

Do not look for the living among the dead

Do not look for the light among the darkness

I could not rule myself, and so

The Eternal Father rules all now.

Then, on the bottom, in small square words:

DEUX MEA LUX EST


End file.
